Creative Outrage

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Also from KOS Publishing

Corrupt to the Core
Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower
by Shiv Chopra
Healing The Planet One Patient At A Time
by Jozef Krop, MD
Adventures in Psychiatry
The Scientic Memoirs of Dr. Abram Hoffer
Available through the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine,
16 Florence Ave., North York, ON M2N 1E9 416-733-2117 www.orthomed.org
Available for free downloading on www.kospublishing.com
Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health
by Helke Ferrie
What Part of No! Don't They Understand?
Rescuing Food and Medicine from Government Abuse
by Helke Ferrie
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Helke Ferrie
A Medical Journalist Reports
on the Good, the Bad and the
Ugly in Current Medicine
Prefaces by
CHARLOTTE GERSON, SHI V CHOPRA
AND CAROLYN DEAN, MD
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Copyright 2013 Helke Ferrie
All Rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in review.
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This book is dedicated to Julia Woodford, Editor of Vitality Magazine
in Toronto.
Since 1999, Julia provided the soap box from which I was allowed to
hold forth about the politics of medicine.
Any success I may have had in offering food for critical thought and
furthering respectful non-compliance among medical consumers
was possible only because of Julias constant encouragementand
her much appreciated editing.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface: Shiv Chopra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Preface: Carolyn Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
Preface: Charlotte Gerson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xiii
Introduction: The Uses of Creative Outrage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Section 1 Regulationthe Grand Deception . . . . . . . . . . . .11
The Tyranny of Government Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Health Canadas War On Natural Health . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Wake Up, Canada! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
The Irrational Factor In Medical Regulation
And Ontarios 2011 Complementary
Medicine Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Lyme Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Section 2 The Human Life Support System . . . . . . . . . . . .111
The Reach Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111
Biotech Food Fights and the Future of Food . . . . . . . . . . .120
The Five Pillars of Food Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148
EMF Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150
Section 3 Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
The War on Cancer: Anatomy of Failure . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Forced Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192
AsbestosCanadas Politics Of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and His Clinical Trial . . . . . . . . . .204
The Gerson Therapy and the Trophoblast Theory
of Cancer Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .220
Section 4 Old Truths In New Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
Vitamin DNatures Magic Bullet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
The Birth of a StarDr. A. Gabys Magnum Opus . . . . .250
J. Prouskys Textbook of Integrative Clinical Nutrition . . . .262
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Section 5 Toxic Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265
Lies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265
Progress The Hard Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .273
Medical Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281
Toxic Psychiatry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .292
Section 6 Have the Courage to Use Your Own Reason! .319
The Intelligent Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339
Understanding Propaganda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .348
Re-Occupy Your Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .356
2012 A Year of Revelations In Healthcare . . . . . . . . . .364
Navigating Mine Fields Cheerfully . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .374
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .393
Now What The Heck Do I Do With All
This Information? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .393
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .399
viii Creative Outrage
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PREFACE
Shiv Chopra B.V.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D. Fellow,
World Health Organization *
Helke Ferrie is the author of numerous books and articles on corpo-
rate corruption and public health safety. She is also the publisher of
numerous additional books on the same subject that would otherwise
remain unknown to the public.
The United States Food and Drug Act (FDA) is arguably the most
inuential regulatory authority in the world, with Health Canada
being its closest follower. Its purpose is to ensure that any merchan-
dize that directly or indirectly gets into the human body must be
proven by its vendor to be safe and effective for the purposes indicat-
ed, prior to its approval.
The genesis of this authority traces back to 1896 when it was leg-
islated as the Adulteration Act to guard against fraudsters selling
impure foods and drugs. Since then, it went through two separate
revisions, in 1945 and 1967, due to risks being taken to approve med-
ically unsafe products for human consumption. Since the 1967 revi-
sion was brought about on the heels of the infamous thalidomide dis-
aster the new Food and Drugs Act in both US and Canada was made
equally applicable to vaccines, veterinary drugs, medical devices, and
cosmetics, but not to the use of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, her-
bicides, slaughterhouse waste and Genetically Modified Organisms
(GMOs) to augment food production.
What followed in consequence was unconscionable but no one
cared. As soon as the new Food and Drugs Act was passed the phar-
maceutical lobbyists went on a rampage to get it deregulated. They
argued that it would hamper their ability to discover new life-saving
products. It was an outrageous claim that few politicians contested to
safeguard the public interest. In effect, the Food and Drugs Act was
neglected purely to bolster corporate prots.
* Shiv Chopra, Corrupt to the CoreMemoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower, Kos 2009
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The real crunch came when in 1984 the newly elect President
Ronald Reagan marched on Quebec City singing Irish Eyes in con-
cert with Vice-President George Bush, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
and the numerous corporate lobbyists orchestrating for deregulation
of the entire food and drug industry.
Thus began the push to pass more and more vaccines, pain killers,
psychiatric drugs, mood changers, anti-depressants, hormone thera-
pies, cholesterol reducers, aphrodisiacs, Botox, breast implants, etc.,
curing no disease but inducing pandemics of numerous previously
uncommon ailments, such as autism, obesity, diabetes, etc., lasting
for life. Eventually, opening the oodgates to innumerable products
of questionable safety produced loads of money for not only the phar-
maceutical outts but also their captive associates in the scientic,
medical and veterinary academies.
Fortunately, the Food and Drugs Act is largely still intact, although
multifarious commercial interests have been lobbying to get it dis-
mantled. Most importantly, the companies in question admit to hav-
ing no great discoveries on the horizon to extend healthy life. Yet, the
promise of getting there is making whole nations sicker and sicker,
and driving the entire world to nancial ruin.
The question to ask is what should the public do? This was exact-
ly the question Canadians asked themselves when Health Canada
was pressuring me to pass rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth
Hormone) for dairy cows and which I respectfully declined. In the
end, rBGH was not approved in this country. To my knowledge, this
was the rst time Monsanto met its Waterloo in public. The same
thing happened to Monsanto in India when it pressed the govern-
ment there to pass genetically modied eggplant. In both instances,
people were so outraged that they outanked their governments to
defeat Monsanto.
This is the message Helke drives at in her latest bookCreative
Outrage. Providing a deep insight into the ongoing corporate corrup-
tion in public health safety, she advises the public not to get too hot
or too cold about it but be creative in expressing outrage.
x Creative Outrage
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PREFACE
by Carolyn Dean, MD, ND*
Creative Outrage is Helke Ferries 4th book in print. Its a compilation
of several compelling articles shes written over the last several years
and new ones specically for this bookall describing the intolerable
state of affairs that shape modern medicine. It provides plenty of use-
ful information about what you, as a patient, can do to regain your
health and not become a casualty of this corporate-contaminated
system.
Injustice in a medical system that purports to care for individual
human beings sets off bells and whistles and red ags for a freedom
ghter like Helke. After all, she went head-to-head with the Ontario
government back in 1972 which refused to allow her and her hus-
band to adopt several handicapped children from Bangladesh and
Vietnam. Helke went on a hunger strike until she shamed the Ontario
government into obeying Canadas federal immigration laws of the
time, which permitted international adoption.
In all, Helke and her husband, Dr. Robert Ferrie, adopted 11 chil-
dren from Bangladesh, Vietnam, India and mixed-race Canadians
(most of them with serious health problems) and also had three of
their own. Through the years, Helke has been an advocate for her
children helping them through health and emotional crises and hon-
ing the skills that she later put to work writing for Vitality Magazine
starting in 1999.
In 1996, Helke was being successfully treated for Myasthenia
gravis by Dr. Jozef Krop when she learned he was being harassed by his
medical licensing authority, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Ontario (CPSO), for practicing environmental medicine. The bells
and whistles went off and the red ags ew landing Helke in the mid-
*
www.drcarolyndean.com C. Dean, The Magnesium Miracle, Random House, 2006; C.
Dean, Death by Modern Medicine, Matrix Verite, 2005.
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dle of more than a decade of activism on behalf of many innovative
Ontario doctors, all with excellent patient outcomes, who were similar-
ly prosecuted by the CPSO.
Along the way, Helke assisted a small band of concerned citizens
to pass Ontarios health freedom bill in 2000, popularly known as the
Kwinter Bill after its MPP sponsor; it was later adopted by several
Canadian provinces, also with her help. This group also provided
moral, legal, and publicity-oriented support to many Ontario doctors,
including myself, who were being disciplined for not maintaining the
standard of practice of medicine, as interpreted by the regulatory
authorities, namely for not using exclusively drugs and surgery.
Helke started Kos Publishing Inc in 2002. The rst book was
Healing the Planet One Patient At A Time by Dr. Jozef Krop, now in its
3rd printing. She also published the memoirs of Dr. Abram Hoffer, a
textbook on Lyme disease for Canadians, and the memoirs whistle-
blower Dr. Shiv Chopora, Corrupt to the Core, who documents the
betrayal of the public interest by Health Canada. But the book I am
waiting for is her own biography, which will show us how her bright
light of activism illuminates the world. Meanwhile, enjoy this book,
Creative Outrage and join forces to make medicine patient-centered.
xii Creative Outrage
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PREFACE
By Charlotte Gerson*
For many years Helke Ferrie has been researching Canadas regulato-
ry authorities and has found them severely wanting. Contrary to their
mandate, which is the public interest, ofcials serve the interests of
the pharmaceutical industrywhose big money corrupts those in
authority everywhere.
The result is predictably poor health, a sick environment, poisoned
uoridated water, dangerous dentistry from mercury llings, and
worst of all, poisoned soil and nutritionally severely depleted and
tainted food.
The obvious outcome is terrible damage to the health of the pop-
ulation. Nonetheless, that seems to suit the powers that be perfect-
ly since it allows them to sell greater quantities of dangerous pharma-
ceuticals for preventable ills.
Helke Ferrie demonstrates with innumerable and reliable studies
cited that our only course is to be outragedenough to take action!
Most important is that she shows the reader what action can be taken:
we must learn what is really happening and provide ourselves with
clean, organic fruit and vegetables, fresh (not drugged frozen and
depleted) food, with little or no salt added, and clean water.
At last the public is waking up! Information is reaching more and
more people who are painfully aware that their doctors are not help-
ing them and that the increasing numbers of prescription medicines
have terrible side effects, often worse than the original disease. The
public sees their friends, neighbors, and loved ones dying in pain and
misery despite those so-called best medical treatments. They are
*
Charlotte Gerson is the founder of the Gerson Institute in San Diego, CA, where
the work of Dr. Max Gerson is carried on: www.gerson.org. She is the coauthor
of Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases, as well
as books on obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure etc. The Gerson Therapy is
discussed in Section 3 of this book.
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looking for helpand Helke Ferrie is pointing them in the right direc-
tion.
Help is available from various reliable sources. And in the absence
of ofcial help, the public is using that information to help them-
selves! Books and DVDs are going out almost faster than printers can
provide them! And those who use them reap the benet. Learn, be
discerning, and be one of them.
xiv Creative Outrage
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INTRODUCTI ON
THE USES OF CREATIVE OUTRAGE
As long as people believe in absurdities,
they will continue to commit atrocities.
Voltaire (16941778)
Be sober and distrustful;
these are the sinews of understanding.
Epicharmus (circa 540 BCE)
There is hot outrage and there is cold outrage. With hot outrage you
end up hurting yourself. It burns you up; however justied your rage
may have been, nothing is accomplished. Cold outrage focuses the
mind steadily and creatively and forties the heart. It provides the
stamina for action over the long haul. Once it focuses on something
worthy of outrage it becomes a lifetimes commitment. This book is
intended to further cold outrage in my readers.
Being outraged creatively requires, in my experience, four guiding
concepts without which the horrors of the world may well become
overwhelming. First, it is essential one picks ones battle or, to put it
more accuratelypay careful attention when a battles picks you and
pulls your energy into its orbit because it resonates personally.
Second, an important misunderstanding needs to be cleared up: the
Devil is not in the details; it is God we nd in the details; the Devil
operates through generalities. Third, it is essential to know the differ-
ence between conrmation bias and a search frame. Finally, if one
expects change of the revolutionary kindsomething like true justice
that sets things rightone is doomed to failure and despair. Justice is
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an ideal to keep in mind at all times, but reality operates not through
ideals but through transformation. Cold outrage becomes as ineffec-
tive as hot outrage if one seeks nal justice.
But rst, what am I outraged about?
I am outraged about what Dr. Joanna Moncrieff of the UKs
University College in London calls the myth of the chemical cure.
*
Her objections focus on psychiatric drugs developed on the basis of
the ction of the chemical imbalancea fantasy diagnosis that
must have wrecked the brains and lives of millions. My view includes
just about all drugs. Those which are clear exceptions to the delusions
of modern standard practice are few, but effective in specic situa-
tions and they are of course not or no longer patented.
The history of medicine is very scary when it comes to drugs.
Todays drugs almost never offer a cure. The information provided by
manufacturers in the packaging of drugs state invariably that this
drug is intended to treat symptoms, and often it is made very clear
that this drug does not cure whatever condition it was developed
for. Before the reader dismisses me as silly, let me mention parenthet-
ically that antibiotic drugs are among humanitys greatest achieve-
ments; they are designed to hit specic targetskill bacteriawhich
when successful results in enabling the immune system to recover
and all other healing processes to restore a persons health. (Of
course, if you have my problem, which is to be allergic to all known
antibiotics, you have something standard medicine doesnt know
how to handle.) A non-curative family of drugs that must be men-
tioned are pain killers; the earliest evidence for them archaeologists
have found among the Neanderthals some 150,000 years ago. They
permit the body to do its repair work while reducing the stress of that
process on the patient. By extension, the same is true for anesthesia.
But most of modern pharmacology does not target a cause, but inu-
ences symptomsreal symptoms and now also more and more imag-
ined and invented ones which very nicely keep company with delusions.
Have we all gone absolutely crazy to accept this way of doing
medicine?
2 Creative Outrage
*
J. Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, Palgrave, 2009
It is beyond rational comprehension that we have been bamboo-
zled into accepting what the late Dr. Bernard Rimland called toxi-
molecular medicine. What is this? It is the acceptance of the idea
that when one becomes sick from whatever agent (bacteria, viruses,
parasites, toxic metals, radiation, pesticides, nutrient-depleted foods,
etc.) and as the bodys organs and systems show clear signs and
symptoms of being unable to cope with the attack, we pour more poi-
sons into the body to silence those symptoms. Whats more, pharma-
cology is fully aware of the fact that these poisons cannot be metab-
olized, that known genetic polymorphisms make such drugs deadly
in many people, and that they dangerously deplete essential nutri-
entsmaking the sick get sicker quicker, as environmental medi-
cine specialist, Dr. Sherry Rogers likes to put it. Drugs are rst tested
on animals: the dose that kills 50 out of a hundred establishes the
toxic level; the subsequently developed drug must then be given to
humans in dosages below that level when clinical trials commence.
If this is not totally crazy, I dont know what is. What is wrong with
us that we blindly trot along with this oxymoronic concept of thera-
peutic toxins, train generations of doctors into abdicating their
innate intelligence so they work with these substances on real people,
and allow our economic systems to happily make enormous amounts
of money from these reality-challenged drugs and human suffering?
The second thing I am outraged about is the universal acceptance
of statistical analysis to health and disease in the formof the so-called
risk-benet ratio. Being sick is a personal and highly individual expe-
rience which absolutely demands individualized attention. I am
nave, old-fashioned, idealistic enough to refuse to give up that idea
of personal humanity and suffering as an individual reality rst and
foremost. To be made to believe that because a certain number of peo-
ple, out of a very large group of those suffering from my particular ill-
ness, appeared to benefit for some time from a chemical toxin
always of course in the short term onlymy life too is worth the risk
to try it, well, it blows my mind, as they said in the 60s when I grew
into adulthood.
Introduction 3
The third thing I am outraged about is the fact that this toximol-
ecular medicine is the source of mindboggling wealth which achieves
primarily enormous additional human misery. And we must consid-
er also the enormous waste of human intelligence and intellectual
energy which is spent on developing these drugs. The great William
Osler hit the nail on the head when observing in 1919 that medicine
does indeed become a drudgery [when] it degenerates into a business.
To sum up my points of outrage, I paraphrase James Joyce who
said in his marvelous novel about the minds awakening from collec-
tive values: History is a nightmare I wish to awake from.
*
For me
modern, standard, toximolecular medicine is the nightmare I wish
everybody to awake from.
My certainty that such awakening is possible is supported by the
wonderful results non-toxic medicine has already achieved. I refer the
reader specically to my reviews of the textbooks by Dr. Alan Gaby
and Dr. Jonathan Prousky as well as to the lecture by Howards Straus
of the Gerson Institute.
Is this situation cause for despair? Hell no! There is absolutely noth-
ing to stop us from using our brains, intuition, and human feeling.
In a deeper sense, this situation isnt new. Two hundred years ago we
lived in a world in which people were sold on open markets, and chil-
dren could be legally executed for throwing a ball through a window.
Today we vaccinate them, but we can say no to that, unlike people two
hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago women could be burnt as
witchescompared to those delusions about Satan and innately evil
women, our modern psychiatric drugs, chemotherapy, or genetic expla-
nations of mental illness stack up quite well as equivalents. But we can
say no to them all, unlike those poor witches.
Indeed, what makes cold rage creative is that it does not despair
but takes refuge in the larger picture of human evolution. We are a
comparatively young species, and as Dr. William Osler understood, to
whom I am indebted for this helpful insight: The history of the
progress of the human mind is a history of a struggle with its own
delusions.
4 Creative Outrage
*
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, 1915
To those reader still with me, I say let us proceed to the examina-
tion of the four principles of creative outrage that are essentially its
tools.
Picking ones Battle.
Understanding which problems belong to us is vital. When my hus-
band and I were young and adopted a few children from Vietnam
and Bangladesh, following the wars raging there at the time, some
sanctimonious people censoriously asked: Why dont you adopt
Canadian children? To which we replied: Well why dont you?
There are many causes, all equally worthy. The one that makes you
angry and speaks to you profoundlythats that one that picked you.
The ancient Romans coined the word we use today as vocation from
the verb to speak. When something speaks to you from within, you
better listen. Picking ones battle also requires the constant exercise of
humility which ensures that one does not opine about matters one
knows nothing about. Understanding the details of the war one chose
to get involved with means simultaneously to leave the details of
other conicts to those who know most about them.
Confirmation Bias vs Search Frame.
Conrmation bias, also called myside bias, is the search for evi-
dence that supports ones hypothesis. In developing a new drug this
is key. You want a new molecule to get to market and make big bucks.
The exact opposite is what truthful science requires: nding informa-
tion that might disprove your hypothesis so you can be as sure as
humanly possible that you have not missed some potential mess. The
great philosopher of science Carl Popper (19021994) brought this
concept into modern science, also called the null hypothesis.
In this book the reader will nd a great deal of information about
how conrmation bias generates medical diagnoses, treatments, and
especially the development of drugs. That long list of crimes commit-
Introduction 5
ted by pharmaceutical companies, which has resulted in so many
successful class actions, hard to keep up with in the news, provide
excellent examples: messing with statistical analyses, remove dead or
injured participants in clinical trials from the nal tallying of a drugs
safety, pay ghost writers to present a new drug in the most favorable
light possible, deny independent researchers access to the original
trial data etc. etc. All that and so much more, including good doctors
deluding themselves that they are helping patients with these drugs,
is the result of conrmation bias used systematically and of course for
prot. Patients, willing to believe they are being helped engage in the
same process.
What confirmation bias leads to, if unchecked, is nicely summed
up in an observation by Carl Popper: Those who promise us paradise
on earth never produce anything but a hell.
Working out of cold outrage requires examining ones own
thoughts to see if conrmation bias has contaminated ones judg-
ment. Closer examination will invariably reveal that the true com-
plexity of a situation has been ignored in favor of a temporarily sat-
isfying conrmation. To understand this better, consider the concept
of search frame. Coming from computer terminology, it suggests
the search for the details within a given frame of reference. If I am
working within a search frame, when hearing about a bad drug reac-
tion from somebody, I proceed to search out the pharmacology
involved, read up in Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine how this
drug is actually supposed to be used by doctors, look up the manufac-
turers information on how the liver metabolizes it if at all, conduct
an internet search on the genetic polymorphisms (exceptions) in
humans when taking this drug, look at the legal actions undertaken
against that drug manufacturer for this specic drug, check out if
PubMed has any published research on nutrient deciencies caused
by that drug, and start looking for alternatives to it as treatment for
the condition it was prescribed for: all that is search frame activity
6 Creative Outrage
it is not conrmation bias activity. Looking for conrmation is the
process of mentally homogenizing the vitally important details.
Nothing is as strengthening for and supportive of cold outrage as
the systematic, unemotional use of a search frame. Equally true is the
fact that mental homogenization of observations, especially contra-
dictory ones, is the fastest way to kill useful information.
God is in the Details.
The architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (18861969) is the source of
the statement, God is in the details which is, however, often found
misquoted as: The Devil is in the Details. He did not say that. In
fact, the Devil is in the generalities. For patients it is of utmost impor-
tance to understand fully that life preserving and life supporting facts
are in the details, and that it is harm and death we nd when gener-
alities are spun whose purpose it is to obscure pesky details. We nd
among them disease management: diseases should be cured, if at
all possible, not managed. Another one is the concept of side effects
because any treatment that has side effects is a treatment which is its
side effects as well as its main effect. It was a revelation to me when I
realized that the list of side effects in a manufacturers information on
a drug is inextricably part of that drugthe truth is that the list of
side effects gives you, the patient, information on just what type of
Russian Roulette you are playing: one of those bullets is going to
shoot you for sure eventually. Then there is that awful generality hid-
den behind standard dosage, or worst of all the concept of stan-
dards of practice guidelines which essentially mean that every doc-
tor better stick to the lowest common denominator of medical intelli-
gence so as not to stick out as different from the herd. There is legal
safety in herds but also the betrayal of personal responsibility. The
RDAs (Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamins, minerals and
Introduction 7
other essential nutrient) are yet another fact-challenged generality to
which the enormous variation of individual needs is sacriced.
Transformation, not Revolution.
A revolution invariably generates more suffering because revolutions
have this damnable property of ignoring the details. Some of the
Communist revolutions lined up everybody with a university degree
and shot them. Some sort of ethnic cleansing is part and parcel of
revolutionseven the glorious ones, such as the American Revolution
during which it simply was suicidal to happen to exhibit loyalty to
the British king. By contrast, transformations are organic processes.
For example, about two decades ago it was heresy to suggest that
nutrition could in any way be helpful to cancer patients; I remem-
ber having people defend the use of garden pesticides in town coun-
cil meetings because they supposedly prevented asthma attacks in
their children from ragweed; in the 1990s mercury in dental llings
was vigorously defended as goodand so on. Those who waged a
battle dedicated to bringing out facts that could not be ignored even-
tually transformed those strongly held beliefs, now known to be
absurd. This book is full of hundreds of such examples.
Revolutions are fed by rage and passionoften totally justified.
Transformations are fueled by insight and determined teaching.
Revolutionaries tend to execute their opponents while those dedi-
cated to transformation respect even the greatest fools within the
search frame of common humanity. Transformation is the fulllment
of Voltaires famous prayer to make ones enemies ridiculous. There is
no humor in revolutions, but transformations tend to be supported by
laughter.
This book is composed of articles originally published in Vitality
Magazine in Toronto, each updated and several new items were added.
Four people whose work I highly respect agreed to have their contri-
butions in this book too.
8 Creative Outrage
They are Dr. Shiv Chopra whose memoirs of his whistleblowing
activities, when working for Health Canada, I published in 2009:
Corrupt to the Core. David Roland who works for the protection of nat-
ural health products has a piece here which requires everybodys
attention. Dr. Robert Verkerk of the UKs Alliance for Natural Health
has an excellent piece her to update readers on the situation in the
EU and its potential effects on Canadians and Americans. Finally, I
am especially pleased to have an excellent lecture on cancer by
Howard Straus of the Gerson Institute included here; it was originally
delivered in Japan.
Creative outrage implies communication, debate, discussion, com-
parative analysis of facts perceived by many. It implies intelligent
communion with life-supporting like-minded people. It implies telling
the world that yet another pompous emperor is actually naked and in
extremely bad shape too.
Introduction 9
SECTI ON 1
REGULATI ONTHE GRAND DECEPTI ON
The Tyranny of Government Protection
March 2011
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from
goodness tainted If I knew for a certainty that a man
was coming to my house with the conscious design
of doing me good, I should run for my life
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
When the Egyptians informed their president recently that they were
fed up with 32 years of government tyranny, which had been justied
as protection from harm, we all watched in amazement. Few of us
realize, though, that in North America and Europe, we are heading
for tyranny light as our governments determinedly proceed to
ensure that we are protected in every which way except the way we
want.
On January 6, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians com-
mented in the Globe & Mail : [Here is] what you dont know about a
deal you havent heard of, namely the impending Canada-
European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
(CETA).
In this new treaty, CETA requires harmonization of all regulatory
bodies in all the governments involved (i.e. EU countries, US, Canada
and Mexico), and eliminates the power of elected representatives
(from federal MPs down to municipal governments) to make deci-
sions within their areas. Since the CETA treaty was created to serve the
needs of industry, it has been designed to legally prevent the citizens
of all participating countries from raising any objections through
their MPs or municipal councils. They are unable to counteract or
override the treatys requirements for harmonized control over every-
thing that can be bought or sold.
Canadas Environmental Law Association is appalled at this com-
prehensive blueprint for an anti-democratic new world order in
which people are transformed from citizens to customers-serfs.
Natural Health Products BannedToxic Drugs Okayed
Meantime, governments in the E.U., U.S., and Canada are preparing
for this harmonization full throttle. By the time the ink dries on the
CETA treaty, everything it intends may already have happened.
Preparations for full harmonization include the following:
A few weeks ago, Ottawa rammed into law Bill C-36 (the former
C-52 and C-6) without mandatory public hearings and despite hun-
dreds of thousands of protests. C-36 is defended by Ottawa as protec-
tion for Canadians from toxic substances, but in reality it bypasses all
relevant constitutional safeguards. Its illegal arbitrary powers, open
to nobodys scrutiny, abolish due process and deregulate business for
toxin producers, while pretending to go after polluters (see Shawn
Buckleys Sept. 2010 Vitality article).
Its counterpart in the U.S. (S-510), became law at the same time
that C-36 did in Canada. The U.S. bill masqueraded as a food safety
bill, but is actually potentially disastrous to organic foods.
The E.U., meanwhile, has responded to rising concerns over
adverse effects caused by herbal medicine; without any evidence of
harm, all indigenous, Chinese, and Ayurvedic herbal medicines will
be banned from the European marketplace, effective April 1st. (For
more on this, see Dr. Verkerks contribution to this 2013 book.) In the
House of Lords, there was an unsuccessful call to outlaw university
courses on Chinese medicine.
12 Creative Outrage
Meanwhile, Ottawa began preparations for the return of Bill C-51
to modernize the Food and Drugs Act. Bill C-51 reinterprets the gov-
ernments legal duty to care and serve the public interest so that
those quaint ideals no longer stand in the way of profits. Mike
McBane, the national coordinator of the Canadian Health
Coalition, writing about drug safety in Canada on January 17 (Drug
Safety: Health Canada thanks you for not enquiring), reported that
the technical consultations on the modernization of regulations
governing prescription drugs were to take place at closed-door meet-
ings from January 19 to 21. That government-Big Pharma love-in
focused on scrapping the precautionary principle altogether, and all
new drugs will now be presumed safe without manufacturers proof.
According to Health Canada these modernizations are grounded
upon our understanding of what Canadians believe federal approval
of new drugs should mean.
Because of CETA plans and its requirements for harmonization
between all these countries, the EU Directives limits on availability of
all natural health products also has to be extended to all participat-
ing countries. So, in Canada we have a deadline when the Natural
Health Products Directorate rules come into effecton March 1st,
2011, at least half of the unapproved herbal medicines, vitamins,
minerals, etc., become illegal. (For updates on what has been taken
off the market go to nhppa.org)
Greg Schilhab, the editor of Nutrition & Mental Health (a publica-
tion started by the late Dr. Abram Hoffer) observed in the January
2011 issue: We have been complacent thinking that just because
something is natural and unpatentable it is the common inheritance
of humanity and free for all. After all, harnessing nature to cure ill-
ness is as basic a human right as we can imagine. Nevertheless, the
EU, in its feigned concern for its subjects health and safety, created
the opening to grant sole ownership of diagnosis and treatment to the
pharmaceutical giants.
SECTION 1: Regulationthe Grand Deception 13
Health Freedom Fighters Mobilize
Well, the ght is on. In Canada, the Natural Health Products
Protection Association (www.charterofhealthfreedom.org) is pursuing
a plan for legal action, as are the Alliance for Natural Health
(www.anh-europe.org) and the European Benefyt Foundation in the
U.K.having won previously, when vitamins and minerals were slated
to go off the market in the E.U. in August 2005, we may be guardedly
optimistic about the outcome.
U.S. Vitamin Lawyer Jonathan Emord, who has won many cases
against the FDA, has written a book about this global deception-fest
entitled Global Censorship of Health Information, which also describes
Canadas role in detail (to order, call 202-466-6937). Importantly, he
outlines the actions that can and must be taken in order to secure our
right to freedom of choice in medicine.
The 2009 report from the U.S. National Poison Data System was
recently published in the Journal of Clinical Toxicology and, once again,
shows that there were zero deaths reported by Americans using natu-
ral health products such as vitamins and minerals in 2009. On the
other hand, The Canadian Adverse Reaction Newsletter published
Canadian data in April 2010 showing that 26,061 adverse events
were reported, of which 74.9% were considered serious (e.g. death). Of
those 26,000 cases, 516 are supposedly connected to natural health
products (www.healthcanada.gc.ca/medeffect). Seeing as how the
U.S. population reported no adverse effects from natural health prod-
ucts during that time, and as it is known that more than 50% of
Americans regularly take supplements (which indicates an amazing
level of product safety), one wonders what this Canadian data is all
about, especially since the range of natural health products available
in the U.S. is enormous compared to the far fewer products available
here. In both countries, reported adverse events occurred almost
exclusively in hospitals (i.e. drug reactions). Furthermore, the FDA
and the CDC have repeatedly stated that the reported adverse events
reect only 10% of the total cases occurring.
14 Creative Outrage
As for vaccines, we have an alarming statistic to ponder: In 1994,
the U.S. recorded that 22,780 students in the school system were autis-
tic. By 2009, that number had risen to 335,199 autistic children.
Meanwhile, outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and other child-
hood diseases continued to occur in almost-fully-vaccinated popula-
tions in North America and Europe, but the overall incidence
decreased. Every attempt was made to blame Dr. Andrew Wakeeld
for an alleged increase in childhood illness, because more parents
refused to vaccinate their kids after his research showed a connection
between the MMR vaccine and autism. However, World Health Organi-
zation statistics proved thatprior to the Wakeeld scandalthe U.K.
and Ireland reported 226,961 cases of measles, in spite of national vac-
cination programs. Yet, after the Wakeeld scandal, there were only
3,079 cases reported. Evidently these diseases are neither inuenced by
vaccines nor by those who warn against their use (see my review of
Wakeelds book in this issue).
With drugs killing tens of thousands, and vaccines shrouded in
medical mythology, lets look at cancerthe quintessential environ-
mental disease for which we have nobody but ourselves to blame. The
science publication, Nature, reported on January 20 that cancer costs
are continuing to climb at a steady 2% annually and will drive the
cost of U.S. cancer care to $173 billion by 2020. Given that virtually
all cancers are avoidable, and that the medical treatments used to
arrest cancer growth temporarily are themselves carcinogens, we are
locked into a system that is starting to appear somewhat ridiculous.
Enormous money is made from the cancer industry (as Ralph
Moss calls it) and equally enormous prots are made from those sub-
stances that cause cancer. But this is a bad business plan for govern-
ment health care programs. Ontario, for example, spends 50% of its
annual budget on health care.
Curiously, governments push for all of those things that make
people sick: drugs, vaccines, and environmental toxins. Imagine if
human health were a top priorityhow much money could be saved
on healthcare by taxpayers?
Brewing Rebellion
We havent taken to the streets as the Egyptians did, but there is clear
evidence of a slow, steady revolt against the hype and spin which pro-
motes everything from prophylactic mastectomies for alleged genetic
reasons, to every possible drug to control cholesterol, pre-hypertension,
pre-diabetes, etc., while also promising one breakthrough after anoth-
erwith more toxic drugs for new conditions we never knew we had.
Big Pharma is getting close to killing the proverbial goose that lays
the golden eggs. Fines used to be small for defrauding governments
and for killing people with drugs marketed fraudulently. Settlements
with governments and class action groups were less than a billion
dollars in 1999. By 2009, this number rose to $5 billion per company.
Such a dramatic change can only occur when there is scientic evi-
dence to prove wrongdoing. Indeed, mainstream research is increas-
ingly revealing the disturbing truths about pharmaceutical medicine.
Consider that in December 2010, PLoS One analyzed the evidence that
many prescription drugsespecially antidepressantscause violent
behaviour. The famous website www.ssristories.org has been chroni-
cling these for many years, and has shown that most of the inexpli-
cable mass murders, such as the one in Montreal and the Columbine
event, were all directly linked to antidepressant drugs.
Statin drugs, which were originally touted as so important that
even children were to take them, have suddenly proven to be less
than useless as a preventive measure (CBS, January 19, 2011). The
prestigious Cochrane Library (which takes no money from Big
Pharma) provided this analysis.
And the important American Journal of Public Health handed down
an astounding indictment of the business practices of Big Pharma by
showing that drugs were being sold for outrageous prices (90% high-
er than appropriate) to milk the system. Simultaneously, Stanford
University Medical School published a study asserting that Big
Pharmas products lack strong evidence that the drugs will actually
16 Creative Outrage
help [and] may cause serious side effects as weight gain, diabetes
and heart disease, and cost Americans billions of dollars.
The January issue of Vanity Fair published an excellent article ana-
lyzing Big Pharma and the damage its research and marketing prac-
tices cause to people all over the world. And the American Journal of
Public Health came straight out and stated that currently permitted
drug marketing practices undermine patient safety and public health.
One of its authors was professor Lexchin of York University, an interna-
tionally-respected authority on pharmaceutical sleaze.
And now consider the fact that in spite of this growing evidence,
Health Canada and the U.S. and E.U. governments are working fever-
ishly to harmonize our regulatory systems to supposedly protect us by
giving Big Pharma freedom to do as it pleases, while simultaneously
removing access to those products the majority of us want (natural
health products) because we found them to do what drugs can never
doprevent and heal our illnesses.
Environmental Causes of Disease
The rebellious demand for true accountability is also appearing in
regard to environmental toxins. In the December 16, 2010 issue of
Nature, the editorial was devoted to the irresponsible policies of gov-
ernments such as Canada in regard to the mining and marketing of
asbestos; it demanded that governments must ban the extraction,
processing, and use of materials that can cause serious disease.
On the uoride front of the war against environmental toxins,
important victories were scoredall led by citizen groups. The FDA
banned the use of a uoride-based fumigant and the U.S. government
nally decided to reduce water uoridation. Of course, they did not
admit that it is neurotoxic and causes cancer, but its a good start. The
city of Calgary banned uoride from its water supply on February 11,
with city councilors voting 10 to 3 in favour of the ban.
The Mayo Clinic announced that there really is no place for mer-
cury in children. This was in connection to dental amalgam, which
nally appears to be teetering on the brink of extinction as the FDA
reviews the evidence once again. On January 14, Harvard
Universitys Environmental Health Perspectives published data
showing that 99% of all pregnant women in the U.S. test positive for
multiple neurotoxic and carcinogenic substances, many banned for
years. Basically all babies conceived start out swimming in a toxic
soup. In all women tested, the concentrations were higher for most
chemicals than considered tolerably safe.
The American Stroke Association announced at their annual con-
ference in February of this year that diet soda and salt increase the
risk of stroke by 61%. This was based on a large study involving 2,564
people. So, does this mean that not only are statin drugs out, but
that decent food is considered a healthy preventive substitute?
On the dirty electricity and EMF front, things are happening at
a rate that is difcult to keep up with. At the point when I started writ-
ing this article, the Swedish evidence that cell phones cause brain
cancer and cell phone towers can also be harmful, held centre stage.
Soon after, an e-mail informed me that Germany had just banned
uorescent light bulbs, because they cause cancer in mice and con-
tain unacceptable amounts of mercury. Germany is also calling for a
drastic reduction of CT scans, because the increased use of this diag-
nostic method is now known to correlate with the increase in cancer
incidence from radiation. (At the Total Health Show, April 810, 2011,
three internationally-renowned researchers in this eld will be speaking
about these issues. See EMF article in Section 2 of this book.)
Why We Need To Police Our Governments
Those who are working to bring back Bill C-51 and to force Europe
and North America into the megalomaniacal fantasies of CETA,
CODEX, and the European Directive are as out of touch with reali-
ty as the ousted Egyptian president. My hero, Julian Assange, founder
18 Creative Outrage
of Wikileaks, observed recently that: Capable, generous men do not
create victims, they nurture victims, and that his way of nurturing
victims was by helping to police perpetrators. Each one of us can
help to expose and police those who benefit from sickness and envi-
ronmental degradation while pretending to help us.
I
Sources and Resources
For details on how Bill C-36 was passed into law and what is being down about
this unconstitutional piece of legislation go to the website of the NHPPA
www.nhppa.org and goggle www.HFNN.ca to nd out what you can do to help.
For an analysis of the unconstitutionality of C-36 (identical to the problems with
the previous bills C-6 and C-52) download for free my 2008 book from my
website. The book is entitled What Part of No! Dont They Understand?
Rescuing Food and Medicine from Government Abusego to
www.helkeferrie.com
For a full overview of what is currently happening in the EU go to www.ANH.org,
the Alliance for Natural Health run by Dr. Robert Verkerk who is spearheading
current legal challenges in European and international courts especially with
regard to CODEX.
Mike McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition wrote his article on Health
Canadas safety discussions behind closed doors in FAIR, an organization that
protects government whistleblowers; published January 17, 2011.
Greg Schilhab is the editor of the Nutrition & Mental Health quarterly newsletter
published by the International Schizophrenia Foundation, 16 Florence Street,
Toronto, ON, M2N 1E9. To subscribe e-mail
centre@orthomed.org
The full report on adverse events from drugs compiled by the US government for
2009 was published in Clinical Toxicology, vol. 48, p. 979 ff, 2010. Free download
from http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2009%20AR.pdf
The Canadian data for 2009 were published in Canadian Adverse Reaction
Newsletter vol. 20, issue 2, April 2010. Google this topic for current updates
done annually.
The issues concerning adverse events, how many people are killed by properly
prescribed drugs, and the history of this research are accessed by googling the
name of the key researcher, the late Dr. Barbara Stareld (of Johns Hopkins
Medical School, Baltimore).
For the complete report on how many children became ill with which disease,
despite vaccines, the autism statistics from 1994 through 2009 and more, as
well as the WHO records google Dr. F. Edward Yazbak and/or The Wakeeld
Factor.
The statistics on the increasing costs of cancer care were published in the
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Jan. 19, 2011, vol. 103 No 2
The nes paid by pharmaceutical companies for fraudulently marketed or toxic
drugs are published in Public Citizen, December 16, 2010.
The Mayo Clinics pediatric neurologist Dr. Suresh Kotagals statement that
there is no place for mercury in children referred to both vaccine
preservatives and dental amalgam llings: FDA hearings on dental amalgam
toxicity in December 2010. Read the whole report on
www.Dr. Mercola January 28, 2011, or google S. Kotagals name.
The fact that 99% of all pregnant women tested had above-limit stores of toxic
chemicals, comes from Environmental Health Perspectives, January 14, 2011:
Environmental Chemicals in Pregnant Women in the US: NHANES 200304
20 Creative Outrage
The increased risk of stroke from diet soda and salt intake was a report from the
annual conference January 2011 and can be downloaded from their website
(google American Heart Association, February 10, 2011)
The sources for the abuses of health care systems by Big Pharma were pub-
lished in the American Journal of Public Health on January 13 and refer back to a
study in the UKs Lancet in 1971 on the topic of inverse care law which was test-
ed in 2010 with current pharmaceutical marketing practices.
The ndings that statin drugs are not preventive of heart disease and stroke
came from the Cochrane Collaborations Library which is currently the most
important independent watchdog of standard medicine research and clinical
ndings. It is located at Oxford University, UK and has thousands of doctors and
researchers contributing to it every year. Their material is free and can be
downloaded and shared.
PLoS One stands for Public Library of Science One which is an on-line free
medical journal in which the leading people of any eld publish, but only if they
can declare that they receive no money from Big Pharma and that their research
does not involves these companies. PLoS has become the largest medical jour-
nal family in the world. For the SSRI/antidepressant connection to violence see
PLoS One, Volume 5, issue12, December 2010. For further information
www.ssristories.com and the website Mad in America.
For issues on cell phones and cancer see Debra Lee Davis, DisconnectThe
Truth About Cell Phones and What the Industry Doesnt Want You To Know,
2010.
For the information on the toxicity of energy-efcient light bulbs and Germanys
stance on them go to www.communities.canada.com or
e-mail dnicholson@yaknet.ca.
The information on uoride is available from the website of Fluoride Action
Network.
Update May 2011
The ofcial deadline about which all retailers and manufacturers
were informed was March 1, 2011. Retailersi.e. your health food
storeswere told that they may sell existing stocks of products not yet
certied, but may not order new stock, regardless of what the con-
sumer wants and relies upon to protect his and her health.
I made some calls and was told that March 1 was the last thing
they all knew about. Late that evening, I found a message from the
NHPPA informing that Health Canada had yet again postponed its
lowering of the boom, and this time its anybodys guess when they
will lower it yet again.
On February 12, 2011, the director of the Health Canada Natural
Health Products Directorate announced at a meeting in Quebec that
his directorate would accept the original 32 recommendations from
more than a decade ago about the standards of evidence for natural
products, which the Senate had decided needed to be fundamentally
different from those standards required for synthetic drugs. The origi-
nal Senate recommendations made to parliament in the 1990s was
that all natural health products must be recognized as being inher-
ently safeunlike all pharmaceutical drugs which are, quite rightly,
always assumed to be toxic unless proven otherwise or shown to be
tolerable in specied dosages that hopefully wont kill people. In
the US they are referred to as GRAS = Generally Recognized As Safe.
The fact is, however, that current Canadian regulations would have to
be fundamentally changed to incorporate those original 32 recom-
mendations made by the Canadians Senate. There is no evidence that
anything like it has happened. Stating at that Quebec meeting that
those 32 recommendations are accepted has no substance! What is not
hot air is that the infamous deadline of March 1 did disappear and
nobody knows when a new deadline will be imposed. What is also a
fact is that the current regulations are a blatant example of arbitrary
government policy unsupported by law.
22 Creative Outrage
Stay tuned. Your guess is as good as anybodys, and here is mine
for entertainment purposes mostly: It is possible, in my view, that
Health Canada has been cautioned and told to cool it until after the
next federal election, and since the return of Bill C-51is a plan that
has begun with Big Pharma industry hearings behind closed doors,
getting it into law undoubtedly would require a Conservative major-
ity, Prime Minister Harpers goalin place until 2015.
On the Health Canada website it states that as far back as 2005
polls showed that 71% of Canadians use natural health products
and most also vote. The battle is not over and has indeed begun in
earnest now. Your support of the efforts of the NHPPA is vital and your
opposition to Health Canadas insistence on regulation natural
health products as if they were toxic drugs is equally vital.
The bottom line is this: exercise your democratic right and respon-
sibility to oppose junk science and tyrannical government regulation
that interferes with how you wish to treat your ailments and prevent
getting sick.
Update Spring 2013
On the problems still facing the free trade treaty with Europe (CETA):
CBC news reported on November 22, 2012, that the main problems
appear to be for the agricultural sector, or what was referred to as
sacred cows. Europeans have very different ideas about food pro-
duction and most EU members do not want genetically modied
foods and forbid, by law, the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in
food-producing animals. They also have different ideas about food
processing safety. Well, maybe CETA will have to wait till the cows
come home. The best summary on what CETA is really about can be
downloaded from the website of Council on Canadians: www.canadi-
ans.org.
An excellent article in Common Ground (February 2013)
describes how Health Canadas Natural Health Products
Directorate is slowly but surely taking many such products off the
market, such as most recently Natokinase, without the slightest
legal justication, adverse event reports and even a legislative basis for
their activities. Go to www.commonground.org.
Highly recommended are the articles on just how Health Canada
destroys natural health products are the articles in Vitality by Dr.
Zoltan Rona: www.vitalitymagazine.com. He has also recently pub-
lished in the same magazine excellent information on the harm and
ineffectiveness of statin drugs.
Interestingly, Health Canada seems to feel the heat from the pub-
lic, given that about
2
3 of Canadians use natural health products and
most of those people vote. An open letter by the Natural Health
Products Directorates Adam Gibson was published in Alive Magazine
in January 2013 in which he objects to the vague innuendo and
hyperbole created by lawyer Shawn Buckley (who runs the NHPPA)
in his excellent December 2012 article in Alive on how Health Canada
targets all things natural and safe and ignores all things pharmaceu-
tical and potentially deadly. Mr. Gibson asserts (which is really nice,
actually!) that our work is guided by the understanding that NHPs
are lower-risk products and must be treated accordingly. The fact is
that today Health Canada has authorized for sale over 60,000 NHPs
(natural health products) compared to about 8,200 prescription med-
ications. Given Health Canadas record so far, this letter may herald
a possible change for the future.
Read also the article in the Toronto Star from February 28, 2012:
Ottawa keeps ADHD reports secret by David Bruser. It describes how
information on ADHD drugs is handled as proprietary to the manu-
facturer and the more than 600 adverse events, including sudden
death from these drugs, have not changed Health Canadas policy.
The Toronto Star has initiated access-to-information requests under
Canadas current legislation. Stay tuned.
On the uoride front a major success has been that the city of
Windsor has voted to go uoride free. For more information google
Canadians Opposed to Fluoridation.
24 Creative Outrage
Meanwhile, when you read below the excellent article by Dr.
Robert Verkerk, who runs the Alliance for Natural Health in the UK
and in the USA, you will be shocked to learn that since his article
came out last summer, the European Union has passed totally absurd
upper limits for vitamins, minerals etc. The EU has also adopted a
policy which forbids any health claims to be made for natural prod-
ucts, even essential nutrients. The posting for December 2012 at
the website of the ANH (www.anh.org) provides the details on this
development and how the ANH is proceeding with legal action to pre-
vent CODEX from adopting these policies which would then become
possible in the USA and Canada as well, especially of the CETA effort
comes through.
Health Canadas War On Natural Health
by David W. Roland
Vitality Magazine, February 2012
Reprinted with permission.
For the past several years, Health Canada has been quietly removing
thousands of entirely safe dietary supplements from the market.
These product restrictions are now becoming more aggressive. Health
food stores are not able to stock their shelves with as many specialty
formulations nor as many brand names as they used to. Soon our
product choices may be reduced to about one-third of what they are
now. Products unique to health food stores are disappearing, while
those available in pharmacies appear untouched. Under the guise of
protecting us from harm, Health Canada is actually causing harm by
depriving some of us of safe products that we depend on for our
health and well-being.
All of the products targeted for elimination are innocuous sub-
stances, some of which have been safely used for centuries, and some
probably for millennia. Garlic, Echinacea, cayenne, ginkgo, milk this-
tle, hawthorn, cascara sagrada, eyebright, mullein, turmeric and
horehound are but a few examples. The complete list is virtually end-
less, because Health Canada intends to eliminate every product for
which suppliers make unapproved health claimsincluding vita-
mins, minerals, amino acids, protein powders, glandular concen-
trates, essential fatty acids, digestive enzymes, and probiotics. It is not
the product itself with which Health Canada is taking issue, it is the
manner in which the product is being documented and promoted.
Every dietary supplement is a candidate for elimination,
depending on who is selling it and how successful that company is at
jumping over Health Canadas hurdles.
To further its agenda, Health Canada has concocted a licens-
ing scheme to weed out what it considers to be undesirable products
(or undesirable suppliers). What typically happens is that some
brands of a completely safe vitamin, herb or enzyme are assigned
26 Creative Outrage
Natural Product Numbers (NPN licenses) while other brands of iden-
tical products are denied licenses, simply on the basis of technicali-
tiessuch as ling the application too late or not supplying docu-
mentation acceptable to Health Canada. Single ingredient products
are more likely to receive licenses than are the complex, specialty, or
novel formulations typically sold only in health food stores. Some
products are being restricted simply because Health Canada is not
able to keep up with its backlog of license applications.
The simplest way that Health Canada takes a product off the mar-
ket to is to refuse to grant an NPN license for it. This happens behind
the scenes, on a product-by-product basis, without either retailers or
the public knowing about it. The second method (also behind the
scenes) is to peruse websites looking for unlicensed products, then to
send a letter demanding that the supplier no longer sell the products
in question. One such letter demanded that the company immediate-
ly stop selling 25 of its products, the majority of which are innocuous,
traditional herbal teas used to treat constipation, congestion,
breathing relief, urinary ow, bladder control, and other non-life
threatening conditions. The third method is one that Health Canada
has not yet dared to use: that of raiding health food stores to take
products off the shelf. To go to this extreme would risk a public outcry.
Health Canadas war on the health food industry relies on the
propagation of two falsehoods: (1) that dietary supplements are
potentially unsafe, and (2) that Health Canada has the legal right to
regulate health products. Health Canada rst creates a false fear,
then imposes itself as the remedy for that imaginary fear.
Dietary supplements are among the safest substances on the plan-
et, safer than foods. In the entire 50+ year history of the health food
industry, there have been zero fatalities caused by consuming any of
its products. As a comparison, several people die each year from food
poisoning, or from anaphylactic shock from eating peanuts.
To justify its stranglehold over dietary supplements, Health
Canada distorts the concept of safety to suit its purposes. Ofcials
often state that they have concerns about or are not convinced of
a products safety, and offer such speculation as sufcient grounds for
depriving us of that product. This is a nonsensical argument that
defies logic, science, and jurisprudence by reversing the burden of
proof. It is impossible to prove the absence of anything. We can only
document that which in fact exists. If Health Canada believes that a
substance is harmful, then they must provide proof that this is so. In
the absence of such proof, the substance in question must be pre-
sumed safe. This is the same principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty
upon which our entire legal system is based.
Under the guise of protecting the public and by means of its ques-
tionable licensing scheme, Health Canada is attempting to restrict
from the market any dietary supplement that they have not blessed
with an NPN license. Rumor has it that only 20,000 product licenses
have been granted out of the 60,000 products that were on the market
when the licensing scheme began. Health Canada is refusing to license
entirely safe products, for reasons that defy both science and logic.
What Health Canada does not want you to know is that the NPN
licensing scheme is unlawful. There is no Act of Parliament (i.e., no
statute law) that gives Health Canada the legal authority to regulate
health products. The Constitution Act, 1867 gives to the federal gov-
ernment jurisdiction over crime but not over health, which is the
exclusive domain of the provinces. Further, the Natural Health
Product Regulations have never been sanctioned by Parliament, nor
have they ever been reviewed by the Scrutiny of Regulations
Committee (SREG).
Health Canada restricts true health claims for safe dietary supple-
ments. It doesnt matter what textbooks or research may say, it does-
nt matter how many third party testimonials you can provide, if
Health Canada doesnt like the claim, you cant make it. This is an
act of censorship, in violation of the freedom of thought, belief, and
expression guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Health Canada takes the following unreasonable (and unlawful)
positions: (a) that it bestows upon suppliers the privilege of staying in
business, (b) that any product it has not examined must be presumed
28 Creative Outrage
unt for sale, and (c) that any claim it does not approve must be pre-
sumed to be fraudulent. Whether Health Canada is acting out of
ignorance or malice does not really matter. The resulting devastation
is the same. I nd it ironic that Health Canada is committing fraud
in the name of preventing fraud.
Take Action To Protect Your Access
Natural Health Freedom Canada needs your help to derail Health
Canadas fraudulent licensing scheme. If your health has suffered in
any way by not being able to access supplements that are no longer
available, or if you have had to pay higher prices for alternatives to
products that have been taken off the market, please send a detailed
letter to NHFC at naturalhealthfreedomcanada@gmail.com (website:
http://www.naturalhealthfreedomcanada.com)
The Dietary Supplement Protective Union is uniting suppliers who
have had it with Health Canadas unlawful regulations and are not
going to comply any more (http://www.dspu.ca). You can aid this
peaceful noncompliance movement simply by encouraging your
local health food store to continue to stock your favorite products,
whether or not these products have been assigned NPN numbers.
Wake Up, Canada!
by Dr. Robert Verkerk
Alliance for Natural Health UK & USA
Vitality Magazine, June 2012
Reprinted with permission.
How on earth have you Europeans allowed a bunch of unelected
bureaucrats in Brussels to tell you what you can and cant put in your
mouth? This is a common sentiment expressed to me by American
friends and colleagues. They are rightly horried when they learn
that by November 2012, thousands of foods and natural health prod-
ucts within the European Union (EU) will need to be re-labeled so as
to remove any claim alluding to any health benet they might have.
That includes things like glucosamine aiding joint function, and
coenzyme Q
10
supporting cardiovascular health. EU authorities
have seen t, supposedly, to protect its citizens by introducing the
most draconian laws on commercial free speech relating to food and
natural health products found anywhere in the world.
The EUs Claims Regulation: Building A Passport System
for Big Business
Having evaluated thousands of health claims on foods and their con-
stituents in the European marketplace, the European Commission
and its sister institution the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA),
with the support of Member State governments and a narrowly split
European Parliament, have now passed into law the highly contro-
versial Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (No 1924/2006)
(NHCR). It is a draconian regime that bans all health claims on com-
mercial products, whether in written, spoken, pictorial or in video
form, other than those considered by EFSA (the highest authority on
food safety issues in the EU) to be causally proven. Scientically
speaking, proving cause and effect is a very tricky business, as evi-
30 Creative Outrage
denced by the decades it took to prove that smoking has the potential
to cause lung cancer.
Thats why just 222 generic health claims have passed the test and
emerged successfully from the EUs health claims sausage machine.
And thats out of nearly 5,000 evaluated![1] Even more incredibly,
nearly 10 times this number were discarded because they werent sup-
ported by human studies; they were principally underpinned by ani-
mal studies or biochemical evidenceall of which is viewed as worth-
less by EFSA without support from human studies of healthy (as dis-
tinct from diseased) populations. Most successful claims were princi-
pally for vitamins and minerals (the most extensively studied group
of micronutrients that have beneted from over 70 years of intense
basic research). These include claims such as Calcium is needed for
the maintenance of normal bones, or Iodine contributes to normal
energy-yielding metabolism.
But it is the thousands of claims to be stripped from natural health
products thats the biggest concern. So far, not a single probiotic and
almost no botanical substances have been allocated health claim status.
Big Food And Pharma Trade Associations
Are we to believe the justications given by European authorities that
the food and natural products industries are out of control, and are
using false or spurious claims which mislead millions of European
consumers? And isnt it ironic to see so many positive attributes
stripped from food and nutrient labels just at a time when European
society, like so many others, is splitting at the seams with the burden
of chronic degenerative diseases like obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart
disease, cancer and osteoporosis? [2]
Evidence that weve amassed over the last few years demon-
strates that the real driver of the machine is not a concerned
European government protecting its citizens. It is actually a very
large food industry that works hand in hand, behind closed doors,
with the European unelected bureaucracy, aided and abetted by
pharmaceutical interests.
Those looking for evidence of the Big Food and Pharma footprint
need look no further than the specic activities of the key associations
that support these vested interests. Worldwide, one of the prime
movers here is the International Institute of Life Sciences (ILSI), that
has, for over 10 years, been building its rst blueprint system that
works to lock out smaller businesses, or at least make their lives very
difcult, jeopardizing their very survival in the process. The undemo-
cratic world of bureaucratic governance that is the EU provides the
perfect fertile ground for such an experiment. Once tried and tested in
Europe, the system can then be exported around the world. That is,
we believe, the plan and it amounts to nothing short of controlling
the worlds food supply.
Among ILSI-Europes 60 or so members are companies that need
no introduction. They include (alphabetically) BASF, Bayer, Cadbury,
Coca-Cola, Danisco, Danone, Heinz, Kellogg, Kraft, Mars, McDonalds,
Monsanto, Nestl, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Tate & Lyle and
Unilever.[3] These companies appear to be more than happy with the
tortuous regulatory regime designed to be primarily accessible to those
with the resources to buy their way in.
ILSI isnt, of course, the only body driving this. Other co-pilots include
the major European Big Food and Pharma associations, such as
FoodDrinkEurope that also represents the PepsiCos, Krafts and Unilevers
of this world, as well as the Association of the European Self-Medication
Industry (AESGP), that represents pharmaceutical interests.
EU Laws Set To Destroy Small Business, Stifle Innovation,
and Jeopardize Public Health
While the health claims issue has been top of the agenda for the last
few months in Europe, there is a raft of other pieces of European law
that are beginning to bite hard. These are causing increasing num-
bers of European citizens to lose access to highly efcacious products,
32 Creative Outrage
often on which their health and vitality depends. In some cases it is
because products are banned because theyre considered either unau-
thorized drugs or novel foods; in other cases, and more often than
not, its because companies are forced to withdraw products, being
incapable of managing the new regulatory regimes. Some companies
are even going out of business, while others are choosing not to sell
in Europe because the regulatory hurdles are deemed too onerous.
Amongst the most divisive of the EU laws is the Traditional Herbal
Medicinal Products Directive (2004/24/EC). This law effectively pro-
vides a drug licensing system for herbal products that is regarded as
simplied because costly efcacy studies required for conventional
drugs are not required. Proving a 30-year history of safe use, includ-
ing 15 years in the EU, is the alternative mechanism offered. But to
win a license, pharmaceutical quality standards developed for con-
ventional drugs must be followed. This has meant that most licensed
products are single herb, alcoholic extracts, stabilized in a synthetic
polymer base, often with added preservatives. Such products are a far
cry from the dynamic, multi-ingredient, whole-plant extracts and
dried herbs that have been so important in the majority of tradition-
al medicinal cultures, including the two most widespread traditions,
Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
As if this wasnt enough, the European Commission has in the
pipeline a regulation that aims to limit the maximum dosage of any
vitamin or mineral food supplement sold anywhere in the EU. Our
publication of two scientic papers in a major scientic journal,
Toxicology, exposing the scientic irrationality of the approach, [5,6]
along with keeping petitions against the proposed law live in the
European Parliament, are among the strategies we have been using
to prevent passage of this law that was then expected to be approved
in 2007. [NOTE: this was passed in 2012.]
There is not sufcient space here to cover the gamut of other EU
laws that, in their totality, are set to strangle some of the best prod-
ucts on the European market, while also stiing large amounts of
innovation. The principle pay-to-play mechanism that has been built
into the EU system is pre-market authorization. This has now been
applied to health claims, vitamin and mineral ingredient usage,
herbal products, drugs and so-called novel foods. These are simply
foods or food constituents that occur in forms, or have been subject to
production processes, that have not been consumed to a signicant
degree within the EU prior to the passage of the ECs Novel Food
Regulation (No 178/97) on May 15, 1997.
This system is essentially identical to that considered in the revised
New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) guidelines of the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) in the USA, that our colleagues at Alliance for
Natural Health USA (ANH-USA) are working so hard to defeat. As
records of sale and invoices dating back before 1997 become harder
and harder to locate, given that they are no longer required for
accountancy purposes, proving past usage is becoming ever more
problematic. The regulation also locks out any kind of innovation
because new manufacturing techniques are immediately deemed
novel.
The EU and Canada Are Mirror Images
With a feel for how the European regulatory system has been put
together, it becomes particularly relevant to see what evidence there
is for the development of systems that yield similar effects in other
parts of the world. The corporations that are driving the process are
transnational, so harmonization and globalization is clearly their
intended objective. Moreover, the governments of the USA, Canada
and Europe, which work so closely on the international stage devel-
oping food standards and guidelines at the Codex Alimentarius
Commission, have repeatedly stated their intention to converge their
regulatory regimes to facilitate global trade.
There are historical, political, legal and cultural reasons why some
aspects of the regulatory system look supercially different in one ter-
ritory compared with another. Canada, for example, has effectively
opted for a third category for natural health products (NHPs) that
34 Creative Outrage
could offer a lighter regulatory regime than, say, the drug regulatory
regime of Australia, but a tougher one than the food-based regime of
the USA. However, it is the prior restraint created by the premarket
authorization requirement for NHPs in Canada that provides the biggest
stumbling block to manufacturers, suppliers or retailers of NHPs.
When one takes into account the fact that NHPs have been shown
to be many times safer than foods, and many thousands of times
safer than the average drug, it dees rationality that government reg-
ulators should be prepared to spend so much time and effort regulat-
ing NHPs. In fact, the risk of dying from a NHP, based on Canadian
data, is around 70 times less than dying in a Boeing 747 crash. [7]
Convergence of EU, Canadian, and US Regulatory Regimes
If 12 key markers of natural health product regulatory systems are
compared, you nd that the Canadian system already mirrors that of
the EU. Even more surprising is the fact that the US has already adopt-
ed over 62% of the elements that are strangling the ability of
European citizens to manage their health naturally.
The systems are of course different in many important respects,
and they are implemented to different degrees in each of the geo-
graphic regions. But, in time, the effects will become increasingly sim-
ilar as the globalization agenda gathers strength. That is, of course,
unless citizens decide to take a stand against it.
Table 1Evaluating key criteria characterizing the EUs regulato-
ry regime for natural products and comparing them with those of
Canada and the USA 1) Create framework laws that conceal their full
potential 2) Impose measures that bypass the democratic process 3)
Attempt to cripple small businesses and health food pioneers 4)
Develop internationally agreed upon standards, guidelines and recom-
mendations (Codex Alimentarius Commission) 5) Create positive lists
of allowed ingredients 6) Ban non-positive list ingredients 7) Impose
a pre-market authorization regime for products, health claims or
both 8) Classify some of the most effective supplements as drugs
(ingredients, forms, dosages) 9) Force manufacturers to carry out
human (clinical) studies on efcacy (using only healthy subjects) 10)
Impose unnecessarily high and inappropriate standards for scientic
substantiation of health claims 11) Impose a regime for the authori-
zation of health claims 12) Ban all unauthorized health claims.
Will The US Be Hit With An EU-Style Regulatory Model For
Natural Health Products?
I fully understand just how hard it is for many Americans, convinced
that they are still living in the freest society in the world, to appreci-
ate how quickly their fundamental rights and freedoms are being
eroded. Jonathan Emord, a good friend and highly respected
Washington-based constitutional lawyer and civil liberties defendant,
makes crystal clear in his 2008 book, The Rise of Tyranny, just how far
America has strayed from the principles on which it was founded over
200 years ago. Around 75% of US laws, says Emord, now bypass
Congress and the democratic process, having been delegated to a
swathe of Federal Agencies, among them the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Survival Of Natural Health Products Depends On Us
This article aims to signal a wake-up call to Canadians. It is clear that
Health Canada has recently turned down the heat on its enforcement
process, as well as lengthening the time given to companies to com-
ply with the Natural Health Products Regulations. As indicated to me
recently by Shawn Buckley, who heads up the Natural Health
Products Protection Association (http://www.nhppa.org), one of
the main organizations striving to reduce the loss of NHPs from the
Canadian marketplace, Its as if the water was getting too hot for the
frog, and Health Canada has needed to back off the heat to make sure
the frog is boiled more slowly so it doesnt jump from the saucepan.
36 Creative Outrage
The NHPPA is working closely with ourselves in Europe, our col-
leagues at ANH-USA in the US (http://www.anh-usa.org), Jonathan
Emord and others, in an attempt to deliver strategies that have the
greatest likelihood of maintaining citizens access to natural health
products of their choice. While this is not the place to divulge the
detail of such strategies, we urge you to keep a close eye on all of the
websites of these organizations (listed below) to nd out what is being
done, and how you can get involved and help. Some of the work
involves taking specic, targeted legal actions, whilst other elements
are based on science, advocacy or public awareness.
But perhaps even more important than our actions, are your
actions. Ultimately, it is how you choose to live and how, and on
what, you spend your money that determines which products and
companies will survive. To use an analogy, it is our continued desire
to put fuel in our vehicles, along with our reliance on ground trans-
portation based on the internal combustion engine, that maintains
fossil fuels as the primary energy source for transportation on our
planet. Shall we all get on our bicycles and see what happens?
Accordingly, we must think very carefully about what foods and
natural health products we choose to buy, and whether or not the
advice or drug prescription from the local medical doctor is the most
appropriate and effective health care we can get. We must consider
carefully, also, how we are to spend our time, and how physically
active we are to be. You are unlikely to hear from your doctor that
Type-2 diabetes may be readily cured through appropriate diet and
lifestyle, yet it is an established fact, and one experienced by many
thousands around the world.
Quite simply, theres never been a more important time in human
history to really understand what living naturally is all about. There
has also never been a more important time to defend our fundamen-
tal rights and freedoms. Working together, we can at least offer some
kind of a future for the coming generations.
I
References
1. EFSA evaluation of Article 13 general function health claims under the
Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (1924/2006):
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/article13.htm
2. EU Strategy on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity-related Issues:
http://ec.europa.eu/health/nutrition_physical_activity/policy/strategy_en.htm
3. ILSI membership: http://www.foodprotection.org/events/european-
symposia/09Berlin/van%20Belzen.pdf
4. FAQ on EFSAs 2010 budget discharge:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/faqs/faq2010budgetarycontrol.htm
5. Verkerk RH, Hickey S. A critique of prevailing approaches to nutrient risk
analysis pertaining to food supplements with specic reference to the
European Union. Toxicology. 2010; 278(1): 17-26.
6. Verkerk RH. The paradox of overlapping micronutrient risks and benets
obligates risk/benet analysis. Toxicology. 2010 ; 278(1): 27-38.
7. Risk of Dying in Canada Compared to Being Killed on a Boeing 747 Flight:
http://www.laleva.cc/petizione/ronlaw/relative_risk_boeing72.pdf
Further information: ANH Europe http://www.anh-europe.org ANH USA:
http://www.anh-usa.org Natural Health Products Protection Association
(Canada): http://www.nhppa.org
The next page shows the results of an analysis done in the European
Union on the safety of nutritional supplements relative to all other dan-
gers we may encounter. For specic data on harm or deaths caused by
nutritional supplements go to J. Prousky, Textbook of Integrative
Clinical Nutrition, 2012, a review of which is in this book. This chart is
reproduced courtesy of the Alliance for Natural Health, UK.
38 Creative Outrage
The Irrational Factor In Medical Regulation And
Ontarios 2011 Complementary Medicine Policy
October 2011
If it be misconduct to use methods and techniques that are unknown to,
or disapproved of, by the vast majority in the
[medical] profession, the professional might never progress.
Justice OLeary, Ontario Court of Justice, 1993
Oh what a tangled web we weave/
When rst we practice to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, (17711832)
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Hell is the place where
people are sacriced on the altar of corporate greed, a situation clev-
erly disguised by assurances of the best of intentions. Government
and industry usher us onto that altar insisting that they are serving
the public interest, often perhaps believing it themselves, as they too
are often misled. To stop the mindless cooperation of our govern-
ments with those determined to turn everything (plants, animals,
people, the earth itself) into prot is the task of our time. Consider the
following examples that have now become urgent:
Antibiotic Resistance has made many infectious diseases uncontrol-
lable, warned the World Health Organization this year on World
Health Day. Antibiotic resistance is driven by the inappropriate and
irrational use of antimicrobial medicines, including in animal hus-
bandry, the WHO announced, observing that the world may return
to the pre-antibiotic era because none will work anymore.
Ontarios College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO), started to pro-
duce their Non-Allopathic Draft Policy last year. If adopted, it will reg-
40 Creative Outrage
ulate complementary medicine physicians right out of existence, and
completely control what treatments patients may getall with the
stated noble aim of protecting the public. Apparently, informed
consent legislation did not give them a moments pause, nor did all
that case law which protects the new and non-traditional, the most
famous of which is the Brett decision cited at the top. The assump-
tions underlying this policy are appalling and the rules proposed are
absurd, formally dened as being at variance with reason. Doctors
who actually are trained in something other than drug therapy, (i.e.
members of the Ontario Medical Associations Section on
Complementary Medicine) were not included in the CPSOs policy com-
mittee. So health professionals who effectively know nothing about
complementary medicine came up with this policy.
Earlier this year, a Bill proposed in the U.S. Congress died on the
order papers after a two-year battle. The U.S. Food Safety
Enhancement Act proposed 10-year jail sentences for misbranding
which was dened as citing peer-reviewed science about a dietary
supplement. Could the CPSO have taken its cues from the same guys
who drafted that U.S. Bill in 2009? Their draft policy is not just sci-
ence-challenged, but devoid of science. It seems Health Canada also
must have taken its guidance from that extinct Bill, since their latest
acts of random unkindness include restrictions on certain types of the
sale of Oil of Oregano (the one plant-derived antibiotic that works
against antibiotic resistant bugs), along with probiotics and various
enzymes of central importance to alternative cancer therapy.
Meantime, Health Canadas insupportable pronouncements on
the safety of antibiotics in animal feed, its periodic messing with
effective natural health products, the recurring attacks on natural
health products in the U.S., the CPSOs non-allopathic policy review
are all justied as diligently serving the public interest. And we are
assured that these initiatives are all supported by exhaustive reviews
of the peer-reviewed scientic literature. The problem is, these regula-
tors are about as transparent as a brick wall: they wont reveal just
which literature they did review!
In August 2011, following over four years of hearings, former
Health Canada scientists Shiv Chopra and Margaret Haydon lost
their appeal for wrongful dismissal in 2004 by then Prime Minister
Paul Martin who red them for insubordination. The case is now
headed for the Supreme Court. Martin had overruled the legal
immunity granted to the subpoenaed scientists when testifying before
the Senate on how bovine growth hormone and various antibiotics
cause cancer and trigger antibiotic resistance in bacteria, viruses and
some parasites. The PM had also ignored the 1978 Supreme Court
decision that had established the obligation for every public service
employee charged with protecting citizens health and safety to make
public (blow the whistle on) inappropriate pressures to ignore law
and science.
Though Chopra was recognized for his 35-year record of exem-
plary service at Health Canada, he was red because he refused to
obey the Privy Council order to allow mass scale use of antibiotics in
food-producing animals. (The use of antibiotics in food-producing
animals gobbles up about 70% of all antibiotics producedthe ani-
mals are thereby fattened upantibiotics cause protable weight
gainand Big Pharmas prots remain prosperously fat as well.)
Chopra refused, as he describes in his breathtaking book Corrupt to
the Core, because this would lead to the widespread emergence of
superbugs, causing untreatable food-borne disease and death in peo-
plewhich the WHO told us this year is exactly what has happened.
After Chopra and Haydon were red, the government immediate-
ly approved all those deadly antibioticsthe very ones that had been
outlawed two decades ago in Europe. As a result, many Canadian
hospitals, unlike European ones, are now unsafe because of those
antibiotic resistant superbugs.
Antibiotic resistance was discovered in 1961. By 1997 the WHO
recommended a ban on antibiotic use in food-producing animals,
and the FDA wanted major restrictions; the next year Europe adopt-
ed these measures and Chopra and Haydon were commanded to tes-
tify before the Senate about the governments pressure to ignore the
42 Creative Outrage
evidence on antibiotic resistance and carcinogenic hormones. (For the
mechanism involved see Nature, October 28, 2008.) We know what
antibiotic resistance is and how it works, yet the Canadian govern-
ment does nothing to stop the irrational use of antibiotics.
David Hutton, of the Federal Accountability Initiatives for Reform,
observed in his excellent article on Chopra and Haydon in the Toronto
Star, August 13, 2011, that Canadas unconscionable support of cor-
porate interests despite scientic warnings of harm to human health
is now endangering the safety of the planets food supply. (Visit
http://bit.ly/rsR9Eh to read the full story.)
The CPSOs Draft Policy For Non-allopathic Medicine
In 2010, the CPSO commenced a review of the existing CAM (comple-
mentary and alternative medicine) policy rst formulated in 1997.
There is, of course, no such thing as CAMtherapies that work are
measurable events and open to scientic investigation. CAM was a
term coined by Big Pharma. In 1997, the CPSO came up with this pol-
icy as a public relations effort to neutralize the constant public out-
rage over the (then ongoing) prosecution of Dr. Jozef Krop for diag-
nosing and treating multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). One of that
rst policys silliest provisions was that every doctor had to arrive at a
conventional diagnosis rst before venturing forth into the suppos-
edly murky territory of nutritional and environmental therapies. The
following year, a bombshell hit when the U.S. FDA released data
showing that the fourth leading cause of death was properly pre-
scribed pharmaceutical drugs. Today, further analysis by Johns
Hopkins Medical School has shown that drug therapy is the leading
cause of death.
The original 1997 CPSO policy was a bastion of bizarre logic since
it prevented any new illness from being ofcially recognized. Multiple
Chemical Sensitivity is an immune system crash caused by synthetic
chemicals and especially pesticideschemicals also used in many Big
Pharma drugs. Successful treatment requires detoxication from pes-
ticides and many common drugs. Thus, MCS can never become a
cash cow for the pharmaceutical and environmental toxin industry
whose prots depend on obtaining patents for synthetics.
In the past decade, the anti-pesticide and anti-perfume campaigns
worked so well that prosecuting a doctor for taking MCS seriously has
become less likely because of growing public awareness. In 2008, the
Canadian Human Rights Commission recognized this condition and
ordered accommodation and availability of treatment. Today, in the
CPSO building where only a decade ago Dr. Krop was judged to have
fallen below the standard of practice for recommending total avoid-
ance of synthetic scented products for his asthmatic MCS patients,
posters in the buildings bathrooms show a canary wearing a gas
maskthe explanation states that scented products can cause a poten-
tially life-threatening asthma attack, and to please be considerate.
Also, over the past decade, those medical groups that the CPSO
tended to dismiss as unscientic (homeopathy, naturopathy, Chinese
medicine) got themselves organized with their own colleges under the
Regulated Health Professions Act. This evidently alarmed the CPSO,
especially as more and more of their member physicians began to
study scientic journals and take training in new medical approach-
es. The elephant in the room is the fact that so-called alternative
medicine actually arises from mainstream medical research. There is
nothing alternative about alternative medicine. This development is,
however, a problem for the prot-generating engine run by Big
Pharma and whose fuel isus.
So the CPSO, which staunchly defends whatever the status quo of
the day may be, went in for the kill on three fronts:
1) In 2009 they persuaded the Ontario Liberals to pass a snitch law
(Bill 171) which requires every doctor to rat on any other doctors
if he/she thinks that a colleague is doing something potentially
weird. We know what that leads to from all the secret police activ-
ities that were supported by such snitch laws in those totalitarian
regimes of recent history. It means that the ignorant rule, and that
44 Creative Outrage
the CPSO can shoot rst and never ask questions if it doesnt want
to.
2) In July 2011, the CPSO had the Ontario Liberals remove a vitally
important legal safeguard which states: The fact that a member
uses or recommends a non-traditional treatment is not, by itself,
determinative of decient clinical ability. (Section 26 (2) of
Regulation 114/94). That gives the CPSO the freedom to go after
any doctor who, in their unchallengeable opinion, is recommend-
ing non-traditional treatments.
3) The third action is this current draft policy. It is an attack on med-
ical science itself, and will, if adopted, ensure that at least in
Ontario nothing new can happen. This draft policy requires that
any non-allopathic diagnosis and treatment (as arbitrarily
dened by the CPSO) must be supported by randomized controlled
studies (RCTs). So determined is the CPSO to protect the public
and guide the profession, they didnt notice that this key require-
ment is not the universal medical gold standard they pretend it is.
RCTs compare synthetic drug therapies with each other usually for
chronic conditions. RCTs are virtually impossible to design for
nutritional interventions because no ethics committee would per-
mit a control group to be deprived of such essentials to survival.
Worst of all, about 80% of all medical practice has no RCTs or
even regular studies to support ita fact the CPSO is on record as
having recognized in various disciplinary investigations. Most of
what happens in everyday medical interventions is based on tra-
dition and adjusted as outcomes show what can be improved. In
fact, most drugs are only partly understood and used in a trial-
and-error fashion, usually off-label.
University of Torontos Dr. Ross Upshur has published his research on
these types of studies and observes that RCTs are fundamentally
awed because their methodology is vulnerable to bias, fraud, plain
errors of interpretation, and inappropriate assumptions. If done well
(i.e. with patient outcome not money as the goal), they are of course
very useful, but if current medical practice was compelled to have
such RCTs rst before doing anything, this is what would happen,
according to Upshur: Evidence of the optimal combination of agents
to treat Alzheimers disease would require 127 randomized trials,
63,500 patients and 286 years. As for trials for the treatment of
stroke, one would need at least 31 RCTs and require an enrollment of
186,000 patients, all of which would last 155 years. If standard med-
icine were forced to wait for RCTs to justify action, people would sim-
ply have to die rst.
The CPSOs review committee also simply ignored that huge
amount of mainstream published research on nutrition, toxicology,
and related areas (see Vitality, March 2011) and wont tell anybody just
exactly what research they did rely on. In my response, available on
the CPSO website, I observed: By what authority this working group
believes they can just assert having studied some unspecied non-allo-
pathic information and then tell [doctors] how to do their work, is
beyond comprehension. The term that springs to mind is bullying.
When asked what was missing in this policy I replied: The sci-
ence! Given that the policy clearly insists that [doctors] must abide
by allopathic standards it is frankly amazing that there is no ref-
erence to that master guide of allopathic medicine, namely the
current 2008 edition of the Users Guides to the Medical LiteratureA
Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Practice, published by the American
and Canadian medical associations and edited by McMaster
Universitys Gordon Guyatt (who coined the term evidence-based
medicine) and JAMAs Drummond Rennie. The editors and con-
tributors are among the worlds most luminous allopathic medical
lights well-known for exposing the wave of fraud in current
medical research and for their commitment to restoring the ethical
and scientic credibility of medicine.
Editor Drummond Rennie states that the purpose of this Guide is
to free the clinician from practicing medicine by rote to put a
46 Creative Outrage
stop to clinicians being ambushed by drug company representatives
to end [doctors] dependence on out-of-date authority.
That denitely does not seem to be the purpose of this ill-con-
ceived CAM draft policy!
If you wish to get involved, rst browse the CPSO website, then
come and hear my talk at Whole Life Expo about this topic, and buy
my new book whose proceeds will hopefully establish a medical
defense fund. This battle for good medicine has reached such heights
of absurdity and lows of deception, it is becoming outright entertain-
ing. When we laugh at the irrational we begin to transcend the dark-
ness and will become creative warriors.
I
World Health Organization: Antimicrobial Fact Sheet No. 194, February 2011
S. Chopra, Corrupt to the CoreMemoirs of Health Canada Whistleblower, Kos
2009
Alliance for Natural Health www.anh.-europe.org & www.anh-usa.org
Health Canadas recent directions about Oil of Oregano, probiotics, and
enzymes go to: http://webprod.hc-sc.gc.ca/nhpid-bdipsn/search-
rechercheReq.do and browse to www.chfa.ca and browse Health Canadas
Natural Health Products Directorate web information.
Background information on Helke Ferries submission to the CPSO:
The request for a submission from me came under Feedback from
Individuals, August 29. This submission to the CPSO is reproduced
here below in its entirety.
Second Invited Response to CPSO Policy Department on
Complementary Medicine Policy Review 2010/2011
CONTENTS:
1. Flaws in the revised policy
2. Comparing the rst draft with the second
3. The disappearance of Section 26 (2) of Regulation 114/94
4. On the homework done by the policys working group
5. Regarding complaints about CAM practitioners
6. Answers to question 1, & 3 published in MD Dialogue vol. 7 (2),
2011; the most extensive discussion is found in the answer to
What have we missed? part 2 of the Colleges Question 1
7. My recommendations
8. Imagining this policy in the real world: A Cautionary Tale
Sourcesannotated
1. Flaws in the revised policy
The recently revised draft policy for complementary and alternative
medicine has been published, and those who were invited to com-
ment on the rst draft are now invited to do so again; I am one of
them. Thank you for this opportunity.
At rst reading, I was happy to see that this revised draft repeat-
edly includes the language from both Section 5.1 of the Medicine Act
and the relevant phrases from the 1991 Brett decision. The former,
known as the Kwinter Amendment, incorporated into Ontario health
legislation international medical law taken from the Helsinki Accord,
which Canada signed on August 1 of 1975. That Section 5.1 states:
48 Creative Outrage
A member shall not be found guilty of professional misconduct or of
incompetence under section 51 and 52 of the Health Professions Procedural
Code solely on the basis that the member practices a therapy that is non-
traditional or that departs from the prevailing medical practice unless there is
evidence that proves that the therapy poses a greater risk to a patients health
than the traditional or prevailing practice.
The Brett decision, delivered in an Ontario court, established that
health professionals must be free to associate with minority peer
groups who employ new or different techniques and treatments, and
that health professionals must be able to do so without fear of being
perceived as falling below the generally accepted standard of prac-
tice. The Decision concluded:
If it be misconduct to use methods and techniques that are foreign to or
disapproved of by the vast majority in the profession, the profession might
never progress.
At the outset I would like to state that I nd it less than helpful to con-
trast allopathic medicine with non-allopathic medicine. These terms
suggest a schism, somewhat like Roman Catholic vs. Protestant.
Given the tenor of the draft policy to which non-allopathic doctors
are supposed to adhere, this distinction gives the impression of
allopaths having a more reliable direct line to God.*
Throughout this revised draft of the CAM/non-allopathic policy
the wording used in these two legal documents appear again and
again, as indeed they ought to, seeing the CPSOs regulatory respon-
sibilities ow from universally binding national and international
*
It is strange that the terms allopathic/non-allopathic are used as it was
Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, who 200 years ago coined the term
allopathic as a deliberately prejoritave term to describe the medicine of the day
which was mostly limited to bleeding, leeching, cupping, emetics etc. in contrast
to his own approach which was the rst attempt to either strengthen or
supporting the bodys own defences, later recognized as the immune system.
law. During the past decade many more provincial and also Supreme
Court legal decisions pertaining to medical practice have made their
mark in Canada, but those two items cited above remain of key
importance because they provided the basic foundation and set the
tone for medical practice in Canada. What is profoundly disturbing is
the fact that only some of the wording is provided, but the spirit of
this draft policy and its requirements run completely contrary to
those two binding legal items.
There are two serious flaws in this revised policy which require
not just serious consideration for further revision, but are fundamen-
tally unacceptable because they run counter to both law and science.
This draft policy effectively would make the practice of medicine pret-
ty much impossible and would stie innovation in bothallopathic
and non-allopathic clinical practice because it assumes that allopath-
ic medicine functions according to the standard proposed for non-
allopathic practitioners. Allopathic practice, in fact, is not at all con-
strained by that assumed standard; indeed, the most serious critique
to this assumed standard can be shown to come from allopathic med-
icine (discussed in No. 2). This draft policy is in error on:
1. The unilateral and essentially arbitrary reinterpretation of what
constitutes informed consent on the part of the patient seeking
non-allopathic treatments, and
2. The prerequisite of a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in order for the
doctor to be able to offer non-allopathic treatments.
Nothing new can happen in diagnosis and therapy and no new dis-
coveries about emerging diseases and previously unknown causes of
well-known diseases, if exploration and individual observation are
not protected. The new always appears through an individual
observation. Of central importance is also the unique quality of the
doctor-patient relationship which involves complexities of informa-
tion and consent not as a one-time event with a signature on a piece
50 Creative Outrage
of paper, but as an ongoing process while both doctor and patient
evaluate and adjust treatment. It is disturbing that this revised draft
appears to undertake a reinterpretation of informed consent as if the
Collegenot the courts or the existing statuteswas in the privileged
position to impose its own denition of how informed consent takes
place and what it actually is. Since the College, as an administrative
law body, is required to follow the laws of evidence as dened by the
courts, the College is not at liberty to lead in creating such denitions
and, therefore, cannot impose its own interpretation, even if this is
intended to protect the public from harm; in fact, it could not even do
so if all member-physicians agreed to such a redenition. The estab-
lishment of such a revision would have to pass through the legislative
route rst before it can be implemented. Furthermore, since the point
of informed consent is to minimize potential harm, it is important to
remember that it is the courts which dene if harm may have been
done, and they do so on the basis of evidence as dened in law, not
on the basis of opinion.
Finally, it needs emphasizing that this policy is not merely an aca-
demic discussion and an interesting practice guide, but it is created
for the purpose of obtaining obedience from its physician members
and, therefore, carries the very real threat of professional death, if
informed consent is not obtained to the Colleges satisfaction.
A patient reading this document cannot help but come away with
the impression that the College imposes what the patient may chose.
The assurances by the College in this policy, and many other publi-
cally available statements, that this is not its intention are meaning-
less when this reinterpretation (limitation) of informed consent is
made mandatory. The contradiction between stated intent and actu-
al requirement is glaringly obvious when reading that randomized
controlled trials (RCT) are the required prerequisite to even offering
non-traditional treatment. Both patient and doctor are placed there-
by in an insoluble bind. To equate scientically based medical prac-
tice with RCTs is totally unacceptable for two reasons: such a require-
ment runs counter to existing statute and case law, and it is scienti-
cally unsupported by the most rigorous standards in allopathic med-
icine. Here are some of the consequences of this requirement:
It effectively undermines the patients autonomy, that conscious
risk a patient wishes to take voluntarily and for reasons that differ
in individual cases; it is a risk choosing an allopathic treatment, and
it is a risk choosing a non-allopathic one. No guarantees are associ-
ated with either. However, limiting patient powers of consent in this
pre-determined fashion, creates an articial double standard not
applicable to allopathic treatments.
This requirement effectively annuls the intent of Section 5.1 in the
Medicine Act. That section does not require any certainty about non-
traditional treatments, it also does not assume any certainty about
traditional/allopathic medicine, but merely requires that it not be
more dangerous than the usual therapies (all of which carry often
enormous risks, as most responsible doctors will agree). Section 5.1
does not require RCT to establish that it is no more risky than gener-
ally employed treatments. If Section 5.1 requires, in the opinion of the
College and based on transparently provided evidence, an additional
caveat, then the public consultation process available through leg-
islative process is available to deal with such a suggestion. Of course,
that would mean that the College would have to provide legally
acceptable evidence proving that RCT is the universally accepted
standard in allopathic medicine and constitutes the gold standard for
clinical application. That is not the case.
This requirement also ignores and clearly bypasses Brett which
specically addresses the need to protect the minority opinion and
experience; Brett explicitly protects the new, the not-yet-established,
as being absolutely necessary for medicine to remain alive and well.
Randomized controlled studies do not, as a rule, start something new,
but test something partly or generally known and tried already.
Anybody initiating a randomized controlled study could not even get
started, or hope to receive funding, unless a huge amount of informa-
tion, which has already been used in clinical practice, can be shown
to exist, so that it is clear that compelling baseline information is
52 Creative Outrage
available already from which such a randomized study can begin its
inquiry. Brett is concerned with protecting that starting point.
Progress in medicine is not possible without Brett, and even Brett itself
rests on many very important legal decisions handed down in the UK
prior to 1991. The concepts presented in Brett are entrenched in com-
mon law as well as internationally, hence the wording of the Helsinki
Accord. Indeed, it is deeply puzzling and disturbing that such blatant
disregard for both Brett and Helsinki are in evidence in this draft policy.
Brett is further undermined by the fact that RCT is by denition a
large research event involving a lot of patients, often more than one
institution, and big money. Brett, by contrast, explicitly protects the
single doctors intuition and insightful observation gained from inter-
action with the individual patient and the professional need to dis-
cuss and study such observations with colleagues facing similar
patients; it also protects the possibility of discovery of new diseases
and new understanding of their causesall situations that dont hap-
pen suddenly on a large scale, but most often are observed by a doc-
tor here or there whose observations are later recognized as being
generally important and valid. If RCT had been the prerequisite for
handwashing, doctors might still not wash them. The fact is, that by
the time a randomized trial is undertaken, the treatment it is intended
to clarify, is published for the profession and available all over the world.
The importance of RCTs is afrmed as if they constitute a guaran-
tee for safety and efcacy. A serious misunderstanding arises thereby
because randomized trials are discussed within the context of safety
and efcacy. Such trials do not necessarily establish safety and efca-
cy; basic biochemistry and toxicology are a lot better at that! Anyone
who has ever attended a conference devoted to drug design sponsored
by the big drug companies will know that the chief concern discussed
concerning old drugs as well as new ones hoping to get to market, is
their universally acknowledged liver and central-nervous-system tox-
icity. Under the best of circumstances, RCTs tend to be very good on
providing statistical information about safety and efcacy. The very
fact that statistical information is at the core of any RCT means that
the exception, the biochemical individuality which later may prove
to be very valuable for new insightsthat this exception which non-
allopathic doctors tend to face (or are attuned to noticing) is not con-
sidered. RCTs focus on drug therapy, but some non-allopathic medi-
cine tries to deal with the often intolerable side effects of such drug
therapy (however appropriate statistically) in those patients who
remain ill. Indeed, if the RCT approach had been a requirement, the
accidental discovery of penicillin would not have taken off: it was an
accident after all interpreted by a prepared mind. True, such trials did
not exist when Alexander Fleming made this discovery. But are we to
assume that no more Alexander Flemings will appear? That no more
accidental discoveries can be made? That the application of the unex-
pected will never be necessary again? That only statistics apply to
clinical reality? Neither allopathic nor non-allopathic medicine is
going to benet from the imposition of such an inappropriate
requirement for clinical practice.
Most importantly, the RCT requirement in terms of safety and efca-
cy leads to the question why the College believes that the onus is on
the doctor to prove safety. This is standing common law on its head.
When a doctor treats a patient with something new and non-tradi-
tional, he/she certainly is legally required to do so using the best
available evidence and must inform the patient of everything perti-
nent. However, the test of treatment cannot be exclusively determined
by the availability of an RCT, but must focus on patient outcome. The
obligation to follow a cookbooks recipe does not guarantee a good
cake is baked. Every baker knows that lots of adjustments, imposed by
local conditions, are often needed and that those will not be found in
the recipe but arise from experience. This issue is of central signi-
cance to patient choice and their power of consent being respected, as
well as to innovation in medicine.
I have witnessed personally many discipline cases at the CPSO
during which doctors were prosecuted not because a patient was
harmed, placed in danger, neglected, or even complained, but instead
54 Creative Outrage
because of the Colleges insistence of a potential lack of safety which
was alleged in such trials, but never proven by the prosecution. In
some of these discipline cases the prosecuting CPSO even explicitly
agreed that the patients thus treated improved, but still penalized the
doctor for supposedly having fallen below the standard of practice
because of a potential issue of safety. To use the baking analogy
again: it is as if the College agreed that the cake was ne, but the way
the doctor cracked those eggs might have landed them on the oor
instead of in the dough, so the cake then would have been no good.
By that absurd reasoning every doctor in Ontario ought to be going
through a Section 75 investigation for exposing patients to potential
harm! The ignored fact is that the College, being the prosecuting
administrative law body, carries the burden of proof of harmand it
is not the defense that must prove safety or lack of harm.
Aside from the common law requirement that onus of proof rests
with the prosecution, another reason this is so stems from the fact
that at the heart of administrative law in particular is its obligation
to protect constitutional rights and observe the rules of evidence.
Furthermore, the law requires that the evidence tendered by the
defense (i.e. the results of the treatment, the patient information
available in the chart) must be treated exactly the same way as if it
was a court of law. Hence, this draft policy must make it very clear that
it is not the non-allopathic doctor, but the College that must prove the
case, if safety or harm are suspected in a non-allopathic practice.
2. Comparing the first draft with the second
In July of last year I provided my rst invited response to the CPSOs
current CAM Policy Review and to it I appended 71 citations from the
current mainstream medical literature and case law. Despite that
compelling evidence, this draft policy continues to ignore that about
80% of all currently accepted allopathic practices are not based on
RCTs and that for especially surgical interventions there are no such
studies at all. This 80% statistic of lack of scientic rigor underpinning
allopathic medicine derives from the research of the US government
and was afrmed by prosecution witnesses in CPSO discipline inves-
tigations of CAM doctors. It is also acknowledged in the current edi-
tion of the AMA and CMAs Users Guide to the Medical Literature (more
below on it). One especially interesting example of this lack of RCT
rigor concerns vaccine safety: currently, the US Centers for Disease
Control are in the process of commencing the rst ever (!) safety trials
on commonly used vaccines. They have been presumed to be safe for
almost two centuries. No risk/benet ratio has ever been seriously
considered, even though adverse events have been faithfully recorded
by the US government; in Canada no adverse events from vaccines
are recorded, despite the repeated request from the Canadian
Medical Association to initiate such a data base.)
The many citations on the current credibility crisis in allopathic
medicine which I originally provided were all from the mainstream
allopathic community. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 10
this year that the retractions of medical publications because of fraud
and error has increased 15 fold in one decade with more than 300 of
these having occurred last year. The Mayo Clinic announced this year
(cited in the same report) that an entire decade of research into can-
cer therapy based on large randomized trials must be dismissed as
based on fraud and error; this prompted the editor-in-chief of the
Lancet to observe, that these fraudulent studies are a scar on the
moral body of science. The media and the standard medical publi-
cations constantly report on research and publication fraud, lack of
safety in standard medicine, soaring conicts of interest, and the
resultant harm to patients. All of that informationno exceptions
that I know ofarises from allopathic medical practices.
Why then does this revised policy read as if the College is ever so
anxious to protect patients from harm and exploitation assumed to
be potentially lurking in non-allopathic medicine? Written as if no
credibility storm is engulng allopathic medicine, this draft policy
clearly assumes that doctors using non-allopathic therapies often
might be crooks. This is plainly insulting. Such assumptions are
unworthy of a professional College and a mere footnote should have
56 Creative Outrage
been provided referencing codes of ethics and relevant statutes that
deal with fraud of any kind and apply to both allopathic and non-
allopathic doctors. The policy wording clearly insinuates that the sci-
ence and clinical justication of non-allopathic practices are to be
assumed guilty until proven innocent, must be suspected of scientic
deciency and, therefore, may easily lead to deception and exploita-
tion of patients.
In addition to this troubling assumption, what also has remained
in the revised policy is the need for fundamental legal fairness regard-
ing relevant expertise. In a court of law this disregard for appropriate
peer input would be unthinkable and lead to a mistrial. By what
authority this working group believes they can just assert having
studied some unspecied non-allopathic information and then tell
non-allopaths how to do their work, is beyond comprehension. The
term that springs to mind is bullying.
In an e-mail replying to my inquiry on this matter, the College
conrmed that the working group responsible for this policy consists
of doctors who do not practice CAM, and that this is just the way it is
done. This is all the more astonishing when considering the original
assurance provided in the 1997 Walker Report which stated that in
the elucidation of standards in complementary and alternative med-
icine, members of the profession respected in the eld of complemen-
tary medicine approaches should be included in a standing advisory
panel. Dr. Walker also made explicit reference to the then newly
formed OMA Section on Complementary Medicinenone of whose
members were part of this current working group.
This fact that the policy is handed down by people who do not
practice non-allopathic areas undermines the credibility of this poli-
cy totally. In fact this is absurd (dictionary denition: at variance with
reason). How would the working group members like it if non-allo-
pathic doctors formed a working group of telling allopaths what stan-
dards of practice they ought to meet? This would be most entertain-
ing! I suspect allopaths would rightly invoke the need for obeying the
principles of natural justice.
3. The disappearance of Section 26 (2) of Regulation 114/94
When this review process first began, common courtesy demanded
that those of us whose input was requested would assume good will
and the collegial absence of bias on the part of the CPSO. I personal-
ly did assume good will, but now I am seriously doubtful because
most recent developments have shown that such an assumption is no
longer possible. During the time that this policy was in its preparato-
ry phase, the CPSO requested that the Ontario government eliminat-
ed Section 26 (2) of Regulation 114/94:
The fact that a member uses or recommends a non-traditional treatment is not,
by itself, determinative of decient clinical ability.
Given that the CPSO caused this section to be removed, it is clear
that any medical activities or recommendations by a physician in
Ontario deemed to be non-traditional by the College, can now be
considered potentially determinative of decient clinical ability.
This attitude is further emphasized by the requirements outlined in
the proposed draft policy, which resolutely undermines both Brett and
the Medicine Act discussed above. The removal of this section demon-
strates blatant disregard for patient autonomy and choice, and a
clearly afrmed lack of support for and interest in innovation in med-
ical practice. Therefore, this policy serves an undeclared status quo,
but nothing else that I can see. Removing this section sends the message
that neither Brett nor Section 5.1 of the Medicine Act carry any weight
with the CPSO. In other words: Do something non-traditional, and you
may lose your license, because anything non-traditional may be a sign
of your clinical deciencyif we, the CPSO, believe it to be so. Given this
sections removal, the stated intentions of this policy ring hollow.
4. On the homework done by the policys working group
In vol. 7(2) 2011 of the MD Dialogue on page 6, the assertion is made
that the working group did a lot of homework for about two
years. It would be most interesting to know what it was that was
being researched, especially because this research was conducted
58 Creative Outrage
by people who do not practice CAM and, therefore, cannot be expect-
ed to know where to look for information. The learning curve would
have been very steep, but in two years it should have been easily pos-
sible to gain some healthy respect for non-allopathic medicine. The
absurd requirement for randomized clinical trials would not be in this
policy if serious research had been conducted into especially the
results of non-allopathic practices, namely patient outcome.
Since no sources are given and the working groups research is
lacking completely in transparency, it is naturally not possible for a
non-allopathic doctor to point out where the working group may
have missed crucial sources or misinterpreted something. This
approach recalls the instructions of former CPSO attorney Donald
Posluns to mind; in trials of doctors using non-traditional methods
(which they had learned by careful study with specialized medical
organizations, namely their legally protected Brett group) his
instructions to the panel used to be: You have never heard of [ll
in the professional medical group of choice, no matter how large,
how supported by published research, and how internationally pres-
tigious] so, therefore, you must nd Dr. X guilty of falling below the
standards of practice in Ontario. [Emphasis was his.] Indeed, igno-
rance was orderedpossibly to enforce bliss; it certainly made it plain
that total arbitrary control over standards of practice was to be seen
as an Ontario-specic privilege.
This draft policy displays the same spirit: this policy carries the
threat of disciplinary censure if not obeyed and is handed down to
doctors pre-identied by the College as being outside the pale and,
therefore, suspect. It states, in effect: We looked into this and here is
what we think you will do from now on; dont bother asking ques-
tions, because we are in charge.
Without providing the source for especially those rather insulting
assumptions about potential patient exploitation and scientic de-
ciencies, that homework must be deemed at best mysterious. Nothing
is spelled out. Nothing is communicated other than an assertion of
authority based on an undened and unproven suspicion.
No self-respecting, thinking MD can accept this policyespecially
in view of the fact that patient demand has dramatically risen for
non-allopathic treatments. Sick people are not necessarily stupid (as
this policy seems also to assume), which is exactly why they are ock-
ing in droves to doctors who dont practice by rote, dont automatical-
ly prescribe by CPS, and dont pop their symptoms into a predeter-
mined traditional slot.
Since none of this homework is transparently discussed or provid-
ed for critical review, one must conclude with two-time Nobel laureate
Linus Pauling that the working group has demonstrated that they are
down on what they are not up on.
5. Regarding complaints about CAM practitioners
On page 7 of the same MD Dialogue issue the admission is made that
The College does not receive many complaints about physicians
who provide non-allopathic therapies. That is encouraging and not
at all surprising, especially because it is a fact proven by the
American and Canadian medical associations, that the leading cause
of death is currently associated with allopathic therapies, as I also
stated in my rst response where I provided extensive supportive
mainstream sources and statistics. Would it not be reasonable to
encourage the exploration of therapies not associated with such a
horric body count? Indeed, would it not be the rst and foremost
responsibility, indeed the moral mandate, of the CPSO to explore this
well-publicized fact of so many patients harmed by drugs and surgi-
cal misadventures in allopathic medicine and inform the members of
this fact? The paragraph on page 7 continues: During the years
20052010, there were only 31 investigations arising from comple-
mentary medicine cases and that many of these involved egregious
physician conduct with patients often being harmed or exploited.
As I have followed the CPSOs discipline cases for close to 2
decades, it would be most enlightening to know what these 31 inves-
tigations since 2005 were all about, as I am unaware of them. If these
were cases of fraud, they would belong into the jurisdiction of crimi-
60 Creative Outrage
nal law regardless of whether an allopathic or CAM practice was
involved. Nevertheless, if any of these 31 investigations arose from a
specic CAM practice gone horribly wrong, why were they not dis-
cussed in the background information to this proposed policy? This
would explain if there are objective reasons for the CPSOs concern
about the safety and efcacy of CAM practices? If these 31 cases pro-
vide evidence of harm through CAM/non-allopathic treatments, the
public and the profession are entitled to know the details!
Without the details, a statement justifying the CPSOs perceived
need for insisting most particularly on clinical excellence and ethi-
cal practice in all CAM practices (implying they are missing), this
unsupported factoid about 31 CAM-related investigations amounts to
hearsay at best and gossip at worst. As the policy is to be helpful to
physicians and patients, it strikes me as absolutely vital that the
specics of such alleged harm and exploitation be made public
to all. This is especially important because the latest statistics from
the US governments poison control centers show that for 27 years
straight not a single medical misadventure or death could be attrib-
uted to the therapeutic use of vitamins, minerals, and nutritional sup-
plements. After all, it is the use of these in sometimes therapeutic
doses, often given intravenously and specically for chronic conditions
or detoxication, that are a core element of many CAM practices.
6. CPSOs Questions
1: Does the draft policy address all the important issues related to physician
conduct? If not, what did we miss?
Throughout the draft policy, the assumption of harm and lack of sci-
entific rigor in all matters of CAM/non-allopathic practices is
assumed. The policy even goes so far as to warn that Physicians
should be aware that patients might equate the [professional] aflia-
tion with [a non-allopathic clinic] with a professional endorsement of
efcacy and safety. The doctor is expected to make sure that the
patient doesnt get the wild idea that non-allopathic is safe and effec-
tive, regardless of the published facts about the lack of safety of allo-
pathic medicine and despite the extra training a doctor may have
taken in non-allopathic methodsunless, perhaps a supportive RCT
can be produced, even though such are rare even in supporting allo-
pathic treatments the doctor also may offer. It creates the absurd sit-
uation in which a doctor is basically compelled to tell patients that
his/her non-allopathic treatments are probably just bogusjust to
make sure the patient doesnt get odd ideas which the College does
not share (for unspecied reasons). Offering bogus treatments is, of
course, a clear lapse from the accepted standard of practiceand so
the vicious circle spins around.
What did we miss?
Given that medicine is principally supposed to be a science and non-
allopathic doctors are exhorted in this draft policy to be super-scien-
tic, it is astonishing that what is missing iswell! The science! Not a
word of acknowledgement can be found in this draft policy about
even the possibility of some scientic evidence existing for non-allo-
pathic medicine. Given that the policy clearly insists that non-allo-
pathic practitioners must abide by allopathic standards (as misinter-
preted by the authors of this policy), it is frankly amazing that there
is no reference, directly or indirectly, to that master guide of allopath-
ic medicine, namely the current 2008 edition of the Users Guides to the
Medical LiteratureA Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Practice pub-
lished by the American and Canadian medical associations and edit-
ed by McMaster Universitys Gordon Guyatt (a member of the CPSO
who coined the term evidence-based medicine) and JAMAs
Drummond Rennie. The editors and the long list of contributors are
among the worlds most luminous allopathic medical lights.
Importantly, many of whom are especially well-known to their peers
worldwide and to the mainstream media as well for exposing the
wave of fraud in current medical research and for their commitment
to restoring the ethical and scientific credibility of medicine.
Drummond Rennie states that the purpose of this Guide is to
62 Creative Outrage
free the clinician from practicing medicine by rote .. to put a stop to
clinicians being ambushed by drug company representatives to end
[doctors] dependence on out-of-date authority.
This latest edition of the EBM Guide explicitly incorporates guidance
in the form of 7 totally new chapters on just RCTs and their short-
comingshence, the draft policy appears to be an exercise in
conrmation bias since allopathic medicine does not support reliance
on RCTs as the gold standard for clinical practice.* Chapter 2 presents
the fundamentals of RCTs and stresses that a well-conducted RCT
may be the best possible information under ideal circumstances, but
that it is far more helpful to the clinician to understand EBM as
any empirical observation [that] constitutes potential evidence, whether
systematically collected or not. Thus, the unsystematic observations of the
individual clinician constitute one source of evidence; physiological experiments
constitute another source. Unsystematic observations can lead to profound
insights, and wise clinicians develop a healthy respect for the insights of their
senior colleagues in issues of clinical observation, diagnosis, and relations with
patients and colleagues.
The authors of Chapter 2 then encourage the reader to move to
those chapters devoted entirely to the evaluation of RCTs. Of signi-
cance to non-allopathic medicine is their observation (p.11) that
*
A press release of August 25, 2011, from the University of California at Los Angeles
(erivero@mednet.ucla,edu) reports that the Journal of General Internal Medicine just
published a review of RCTs undertaken by researchers from the Lancet, JAMA, the
New England Journal of Medicine, the BMJ, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the
Archives of Internal Medicine in which they revealed the sever shortcomings of RCTs
with respect to misleading and confusing results; their research was focused on
highest-impact RCTs published between June 2008 and Sept 30, 2010.
Unfortunately, n-of-1 RCTs are restricted to chronic conditions with treatments
that act and cease to act quickly and are subject to considerable logistic
challenges. We must, therefore, usually rely on studies of other patients to make
inferences regarding the patient before us. The requirement that clinicians
generalize from results in other people to their patients inevitably weakens
inferences about treatment impact and introduces complex issues of how trial
results apply to individual patients. (Emphasis mine.)
About the hierarchy, which has RCTs at the top if they are well-
designed, veried, and not contaminated by fraud, the authors
observe (p.12):
[physicians] should look for the highest quality available evidence, [but] any
claim that there is no evidence for the effect of a particular treatment is a non
sequitur. The evidence may be extremely weakit may be the unsystematic
observation of a single clinician but there is always evidence.
Chapter 9.2, the rst of those 7 new chapters, is co-authored by Dr.
Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University and Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis of
the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts
University School of Medicine in Boston. The latter is signicant for
this discussion because he recently appeared on CBC radios The
Current and observed in the interview with Anna-Maria Tremonti
that currently all medical research is contaminated by fraud and that
extreme caution is required in evaluating any of it. I refer the reader
to the excellent article about Dr. Ioannidis published in Atlantic Monthly,
November 2010 entitled Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.
So here we have one of the great lights among allopathic doctors,
a leader in medical research and analysis, writing for the American
Medical Associations guide to EBM for the expressed purpose of
sounding the alarm about RCTs: Clinician beware! he writes on page
115. Conceding that ideally RCTs would be the best source of infor-
mation, he observes that this is impossible because realistically for
64 Creative Outrage
clinicians [to] adopt interventions even though randomized trials have never
been performed to test their effect on patient-important outcomes ... even for
medical interventions randomized evidence is usually absent when it comes to
interventions that need to be applied for specialized decisions, after some major
rst decision has been made. For these interventions their adoption and
continued use in clinical practice has been based on various combinations of
basic science, preclinical, and observational evidence.
Starting on page 303, the authors give an entire section dedicated
to identifying fraud and bias in published research. One thing is cer-
tain: these acknowledged opinion leaders do not suffer from illusions
about allopathic medicine and take great pains to be transparent;
they do not suggest the reader just believe them because they are
great guys.
Given the working group spent 2 years on research, it is odd that
something as important as this manual on EBM was either not con-
sulted or, if it was, did not inform the proposed draft policy. Setting
the standard for non-allopathic doctors as RCT is not supported by
the leaders of EBM for allopathic medicine, so why should it so exclu-
sively be forced onto so-called non-allopathic doctors where it cannot
possibly be any more useful than allopathic medicine has decided it is?
Just providing the generic details of those 31 cases mentioned in
the MD Dialogue would have gone a long way towards fullling the
need for transparency that is so evident in the Users Guide which
cites so many examples of studies and/or inferences gone wrong. Is it
not the CPSOs mandate to guide the profession and protect the pub-
lic? The assumption of non-allopathic medicine being not trustwor-
thy, and the requirement of so extreme a standard (that exceeds what
allopathic medicine deems appropriate and is not even endorsed as
the gold standard) needs to be proven in order to be justiable.
Of course, this criticism requires that I, too, provide at least some
proof as to why RCTs are not appropriate as a standard for allopath-
ic or non-allopathic medicine. The most infamous example comes
from HRT (hormone replacement therapy). The use of synthetic
horse-derived hormone therapy was backed by many prestigious
studies conducted over many years, and millions of women were pre-
scribed these carcinogenic drugs for decades, even though the average
hormone dosage exceeded natural levels by 200 times; yet, despite
the fact that so many cancers are estrogen-dependent, it was believed
that HRT was protective against cancer, heart attack, stroke, osteo-
porosis and more. All those randomized controlled studies were
undone nally by a series of honest RCTs which showed that none of
this was the case, and that synthetic HRT was very bad news indeed
because it increased the risks of all those conditions it was supposed
to have been protective against. (See discussion of HRT in Users
Guide p. 70 ff).
There is no need to discuss in any detail the RCTs that supposedly
established the safety and efcacy of the NSAIDS; the Vioxx scandal
revealed just how fraudulent such studies can be. The controlled stud-
ies on SSRIs, and especially Prozac and Paxil, were totally fraudulent
and temporarily fooled even those experts without whose approval
these drugs would not have made it through FDA hurdles. See Let
Them Eat Prozac by Dr. David Healy. To develop a healthy skepticism
about controlled trials of any sort, all one needs to do is go through
Health Canadas list of approved drugs and see what happened to
them over time. Today almost all drugs have black box warnings
(FDA) or advisories (Health Canada).
The most basic aw in RCTs is in their methodology which is not
immune to bias, fraud, plain errors of interpretation, and inappropri-
ate assumptions. University of Torontos Dr. Ross Upshur writes, citing
2001 research by Saver and Kalafut:
evidence of the optimal combination of agents to treat Alzheimers disease
would require 127 randomized trials, 63,500 patients and 286 years. As for
trials for the treatment of stroke, one would need at least 31 RCTs and require
an enrollment of 186,000 patients all of which would last 155 years. The
66 Creative Outrage
conclusion was that there are marked limitations to the ability of clinical trials to
interrogate varied treatment combinations to determine the most effective
treatment strategy [and] there is no guarantee or necessity that such studies
are available at the time a clinical decision must be made.
It follows that a CAM practitioner may never, ever be able to pro-
vide the sort of proof of safety the College demands. Upshur critiqued
the EBM principles successfully because the following criticism he
offered a decade ago was explicitly acknowledged as correct and ref-
erenced by its originator, Dr. Gordon Guyatt in this current 2008
Users Guide. That original critique by Upshur stated:
if the process of EBM becomes more oriented to directing practitioners
to use pre-appraised and secondary evidence resources then authority has
once more supplanted critical rationality as the base of medicine.
The current Users Guide makes the point over and over again that
reliance on out-of-date authority is exactly what evidence-based
medicine must never become. That is, however, precisely what this
CPSO draft policy does and clearly intends to force upon non-allo-
pathic practitioners.
Some branches of non-allopathic medicine are based on thou-
sands of published trials; I refer the reader to the 2010 nine pound
textbook on nutritional medicine with its 150,000 citations published
last year by Dr. Alan Gaby (it weighs the same as the current edition
of Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine). Clinical trials of non-
toxic therapies (e.g. essential nutrients, bio-identical hormones, vari-
ous mind-body techniques, etc) are by denition safe. However, trials
upon which allopathic medicine relies are as a rule conducted to nd
out if a synthetic substance of assumed toxicity or a physically inva-
sive technique can be used with some statistically relevant efcacy to
control symptoms of a narrowly specied naturefor as long as the
patients liver holds out, if a drug is involved. The drugs currently list-
ed in the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS) all
medical practitioners are virtually all toxic; hundreds of pages are
devoted to explaining just how toxic they can be even under the best
of circumstances. That is not to say that they are not effective under
appropriate circumstances and when the patients history and bio-
individuality has been properly and measurably assessed; however,
reliance on the CPS and only the CPS is
The peer-reviewed literature in some non-allopathic medicine is
replete with rigorous studies showing efcacy in symptom control
without toxic side-effects, overall improvement, and outright cures
through the use of non-toxic substances. I faithfully read those jour-
nals monthly. Is it possible that the working group did not consult the
leading CAM journals ? That they didnt consult them is suggested in
the erroneous assertion that CAM/non-allopathic studies/trials are
usually privately funded; in fact, they are almost always univer-
sity-based and/or come from the US National Institutes of Health
and their European government-funded counterparts. In any case,
what does privately funded mean? The transnational pharmaceu-
tical companies are all private and trade their products on the stock-
market. The vast majority of our currently available synthetic drugs
had their research, RCTs and all, funded by their manufacturersa
fact hardly indicative of transparency and independence.
Every physician wants to know if exploring new ways of treating
patients and new disease complexes (which being new are by deni-
tion non-traditional) will be met with punishment or support by the
CPSO. The details provided in the 2001 Glasnost Report and the fact
that a decade later it was the CPSO which caused the removal of
Section 26 (2) of regulation 114/94 cited above, signal clearly that
doctors exploring new methods and putting patient outcome rst,
better be on guard or seek membership in one of the other colleges
regulated under the RHPA. The original 1997 version of this CAM pol-
icy, was even then out of touch with medical and social reality; this
new version may be outright dangerous to professional survival, and
by extension to public health.
If safety and efcacy are really the main concerns of this policy,
how can it naively assume that allopathic medicine is generally safe
68 Creative Outrage
and effective? Radio, television, the newspapers tells us otherwise
almost daily. I refer the reader to the endnotes and to the exhaustive
source list provided in my rst response.
What grates on the nerves with this policy is the arrogance in evi-
dence through the very distinction made between allopathic and non-
allopathic. (Dictionary denition: an attitude of superiority manifested
in presumptuous claims or assumptions.)
CPSOs Question 2:
Is the revised draft policy clearly written?
It makes it clear that any Ontario physician contemplating the use of
non-allopathic practices is in very real danger of winding up in a
Kafkaesque world of prosecution without even the legal recourse
he/she once had when Section 26 (2) of Regulation 114/94, men-
tioned above, still existed. Insistence on relying on unsubstantiated
external authority, as opposed to real clinical experience, also comes
through loud and clear. Medical students reading this policy, which is
at variance with what they learn in university, might take ight from
Ontario or wisely join one of the other colleges under the RHPA. Worst
of all, the onus of proof of safety dened through an unattainable
and misrepresented standard makes it clear that maybe becoming a
doctor was a really bad idea. Read through the eyes of an educated
patient with experience in non-allopathic therapies, the policy is fright-
ening because the same old fossilized attitude to currently evolving
understanding of illness is maintained with unmistakable rmness.
What also comes through very clearly is a total lack of under-
standing of what exactly non-allopathic medicine is, otherwise physi-
cians would not be expected to always rst err on the side of cau-
tion (emphasis mine). The insistence, that every Ontario doctor must
offer allopathic treatment rst, is what patients dont want to hear
any longer. I understand the CPSO derives its mandate from serving
the public interest; this policy serves something else, but not the
public interest when doctors clinical decisions are straightjacketed in
this manner and patients are presumed to be ignorant.
CPSOs Question 3:
If physicians recommend non-allopathic therapies, do you think their
recommendations should be based on scientic evidence?
First of all, given that Section 26 (2) is now history, thanks to the
CPSO, recommending non-allopathic treatment could get an Ontario
doctor into conict with the CPSO, so that part of the question
requires no further response.
The second part of that question belongs in the category of the sort
that is used to manipulate a pre-determined outcome for the ques-
tioner. It is like: When did you stop beating your wife? It does not
permit you to explain that you didnt beat your wife and that maybe
you dont even have a wife. In other words: does the College serious-
ly entertain the possibility that a person with an MD, whose intelli-
gence must be presumed to be rather good for just that reason alone,
would answer No! to that part of the question? This question is
painfully biased and displays an alarming level of ignorance about
bothallopathic and non-allopathic medicine.
7. My recommendations
1. Scrap this policy. The entire exercise is pointless and not helpful in
the least. It is not a policyit is a bludgeon. There is no such thing
as allopathic and non-allopathic medicineand the term com-
plementary and alternative medicine was originally invented by
the pharmaceutical companies as an intended pejorative descrip-
tion. This articial distinction is historically absurd, because the
current so-called allopathic medicine is merely less than 150 hun-
dred years old at besttaking Semmelweiss and Pasteur as the
logical starting points for modern Western medicine. It is also cur-
rently absurd because a regulatory authority, such as the CPSO, is
supposed to act in the public interest which means respecting
medical science in evidence worldwide and demonstrate that it
70 Creative Outrage
does not simply favor the sort of medical practice that is known to
be the lifeblood of Big Business.
Given that homeopathy, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese
medicine are all under the RHPA with their own colleges, they cer-
tainly have proven to be helpful to contemporary patients. Given
that fact, the insistence that a CPSO member-physician may only
use such therapies if these medical traditions are proven to meet
an illusory standard is presumptuous.
Finally, since so much of non-allopathic medicine arose direct-
ly out of university-based research and at institutions, such as the
CAM Division at the US National Institutes of Health, it is vital to
recognize that these new areas will prove to be useful in clinical
settings through evolution, and must not be choked off by biased
pre-emptive regulation.
2. The only determinative factor, allopathic and non-allopathic, should be
evidencebut not arbitrarily dened, but as dened in law. In medi-
cine that means that evidence always has something to do with
patient outcome. This is especially relevant when something new
is tried for which research begins on a larger scale after the pio-
neering effort shows promising results and potential for measure-
ment.
3. The single most important action the CPSO must take, if its credibility as
a regulatory authority is to survive, is to explicitly and in the clearest
language drop the double standard contained in this policy; it is not
only scientically and legally insupportable, it hinders doctors
from widening their scope of practice. The CPSO is supposed to
encourage widening of the scope of practice, not assume automat-
ically that something suspect has occurred. The attitude displayed
by the CPSO in this policy, to be imposed on non-allopathic prac-
tices, will make it impossible to practice medicine effectively in
Ontario, and Ontarians will also have their fundamental rights
ignored.
8. Imagining what this policy would do in the real world: A
Cautionary Tale
Imagine a 50-year old female lawyer who in her pre-puberty years
was repeatedly exposed to DDT from her fathers pesticide business
(DDT was outlawed in North America in 1978.). I am imagining her
as a lawyer and will call her Anne McDonald; lawyers are profession-
ally conditioned to see red more easily than most people. Those
gender bender pesticides caused serious harm to Annes endocrine
system, made it impossible for her to conceive, and eventually neces-
sitated a total hysterectomy in her late 20s, an intervention known to
cause serious deciencies in estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone.
Anne also has a family history of breast cancer: her mother, one sis-
ter, and both the maternal and paternal grandmothers died of breast
cancer. Her father, the pesticide merchant, died of brain cancer.
Following that total hysterectomy some 20 years ago, hormone
replacement therapy (HRT) was initiated, specifically Premarin,
which was the treatment of choice for natural menopause problems
as well as surgically induced menopause. Problems with breast ten-
derness, frequent pain in the legs, unexplained weight gain, and per-
sisting mild depression, unrelated to life circumstances, were becom-
ing intolerable when Anne McDonald learned from the mainstream
media that those protective claims made for decades for HRT drugs
had been shown conclusively to be false, based on errors and fraudu-
lent data manipulation. None of the protective claims held up, not
even the one that seemed to remain unchallenged at rst, namely less
hip fractures in HRT users. That claim was base on just 6 patients out
of 10,739 women and is, therefore, statistically meaningless. Indeed,
all those conditions HRT was supposed to prevent were found to be
increased by its use.
Annes Google search conrmed that these damning studies were
legitimate and that her symptoms were probably due to the years on
Premarin. As her search also led her to the revelations of fraud con-
cerning anti-depressants, such as Prozac, she was relieved to learn
that her decision to refuse Saris for her persistent mild depression was
72 Creative Outrage
now obviously attributable on sound caution. Anne McDonald was
shocked to learn that HRT and SSRIs both carried an increased risk of
cancer. Having a busy law practice, she had not seen her GP much,
but had heeded his suggestion to reduce the dosage of her HRT pills
to the lowest level.
Then one day in 2010 she went for an eye examination to get new
reading glasses and read an article in a magazine about natural
hormones which were described as non-toxic, approved by the FDA
and Health Canada, and not associated with cancer etc. So she made
an appointment with her GP, Dr. John Goodenough.
Is it true, Anne asked, that HRT and SSRIs are based on scien-
tic fraud?
Well, doctors began to notice starting back in the 1990s that their
HRT-treated patients seemed not to do as well as they should have
and became sick with cancer when they were supposedly being pro-
tected against it by HRT. They also noticed that antidepressant users
were increasingly getting cancer, and now we know that SSRIs also
increase the risk of suicide. Dr. Goodenough pointed to a stack of issues
of JAMA the CMAJ. He leaned over and shed out a copy of the Lancet
from1997. They suspected and increased risk of breast cancer from HRT
ever since this article here was published. Thats 14 years ago now.
So with my family history of breast cancer, can it possibly be a
good idea to continue with Premarin at all?
No. You are absolutely right. Given what we know about these
drugs, it is not in your best interest to continue, replied Dr. Good-
enough and starts leang through Annes chart. We already reduced
the dose to the lowest available, but you still complain of breast ten-
derness and you havent lost any weight in spite of going to Weight
Watchers, and I understand you still have problems staying asleep.
So what do I do? asked Anne. I cant just do nothing! I dont
have any ovaries, so there goes estrogen and testosterone production,
and without a uterus I am not going to get any progesterone! My
Google search basically conrms that I am about to join my fore-
mothers! What about natural hormones? I read about it in a maga-
zine at my eye doctors ofce. Can we try those now?
Oh dear! Dr Goodenough sighs.
Well? Do you know anything about this?
Oh yes, replied Dr. Goodenough. Natural HRT is made from
plants, the active ingredient is 200 times less powerful than the horse
urine-derived HRT drug, that means its as safe as it can get and most
unlikely to triggering cancer, the stuff is bio-identical which means
the bodys receptor sites recognize it as self rather than non-self and,
therefore, the immune system is not triggered into alarm, no signi-
cant adverse events have so far been reported, some excellent out-
come studies and observational ones have been published by univer-
sities in the US and Europe, and yesnatural HRT is FDA and Health
Canada approved.
OK, so we will try this. Anne relaxed visibly.
I am not sure, said Dr. Goodenough.
Why?
Well, you see the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario,
which regulates medicine in this province, just brought out this
new policy for alternative medicinewhat they call non-allopathic.
If I prescribe natural hormones to you, with your full consent even,
they could take me into discipline and I could be in danger of losing
my license.
For prescribing a Health Canada-approved drug that is known
not to be toxic? Anne asks, incredulous.
Thats not the point, I am afraid. This new policy explicitly states
that I cannot recommend or prescribe a so-called alternative or non-
allopathic therapy, unless I can prove to you that a randomized con-
trolled study has been done proving that natural hormones are no
more toxic than synthetic HRT. The problem is that I cant tell you
that such a study exists.
But, but, but you just said that there was good research on nat-
ural hormones and you agreed that the research shows that the con-
ventional HRT is a drug from hell, so whats this all about?
74 Creative Outrage
There are a lot of good studies involving large numbers of
women. One just came out this year by Ruiz and his team in Texas.
They proved the benetswell, there is no down side to bioidenticals
at all, in fact. Thats all published.
OK, whats the bullshit here, John? Anne asked.
Dr. Goodenough looks visibly pained. The moment of truth has
come and there is no escape. The problem is, he explains that
because everybody now knows that conventional HRT is potentially
dangerous, no ethics committee would approve a randomized con-
trolled study comparing it to natural hormone therapy. Thousands of
women would have to be recruited to take only the toxic HRT so the
results from those patients could be compared to those women taking
natural HRT. We cannot knowingly give potentially harmful drugs to
patientsunless one outright lies to them, which has happened in
enough studies to give me sleepless nights occasionally because you
no longer know what the hell to rely on.
He reaches up to a shelf full of books and retrieves a book with the
ominous title White Coat Black Hat by Carl Elliott, published in 2010.
He hands it to Anne as he sits down and continues: No woman in
her right mind would agree to participate in such a study. Even the
legions of so-called professional trial subjects on whom most drug tri-
als rely and who undertake toxicity studies for pay, would balk at this.
When they enter a drug trial the toxicity of some potential new drug
is not yet knownbut if recruited for this type of test of bioidenticals,
they would know the risks they run. The cat is out of the bag. So, this
means, that as things stand now, we might never, ever have a ran-
domized controlled study proving that natural hormones are safe,
even though we have incontestable proof that synthetic HRT is harm-
ful to an unacceptably large number of patients. Now, according to
this new CPSO Policy, which they have the power to enforce, unless I
can show you such a never-never-land study, I cannot prescribe you
a safe alternative without risking discipline.
What idiot came up with this? Anne McDonald asks.
Dr. Goodenough shrugs. I know of doctors who did lose their
licenses because of recommending or prescribing natural hormones
and even just warning patients against synthetic HRT. One license
was suspended when a doctor warned of excessive rened sugar
intake for diabetics, because the Sugar Institute of Canada com-
plained to the CPSO! The diabetics probably already knew this, of
course. Another license was endangered by a long investigation
because the doctor used non-steroidal treatment for asthma in chil-
dren to prevent stunted growtha known danger of those puffers. Yet
another one got into trouble and lost her license essentially for test-
ing anemic people for parasitesdogs get better treatment for worms,
I suppose. Another one was put through a trial for almost two
decades for treating people for pesticide poisoning. Right now two of
my colleagues are under investigation for using bioidentical hor-
mones because they supposedly should have done certain physical
examswhich do not apply when using bioidenticals or when the
patient has had a total hysterectomy. So, there you have it.
This is nuts! And where do I go from here? Do naturopaths have
the right to prescribe natural hormones? I dont want you to get into
trouble. Anne McDonald the lawyer is beginning to feel itchy and
combative.
No, naturopaths do not have the right to prescribeyet. They
may sometime in the future, as they do for certain things in British
Columbia already. We cant hold our breath for that.
Dr. Goodenough is beginning to sweat. He remembers his mothers
death from cancer, and then there are all those les in his ofce stor-
age roomall those people he once saw and could not prevent from
joining that vast majoritythe dead.
Funnily enough he observes, starting to think out loud, we
have 5 compounding pharmacies in Toronto which specialize in
making natural hormones, thyroid extract, and various natural treat-
ments for asthma, and many more therapies that dont have the risk
of awful side effects. There are many such licensed pharmacies
throughout North America. You can also try the internet, of course,
and you could go across the border. You can also go
76 Creative Outrage
to court, Anne McDonald interrupts Dr. Goodenoughs free
associations. I dont mind telling you, John, that I am mightily
pissed off. Its okay to prescribe toxic drugs, but you get into trouble if
you prescribe something that isnt toxic because of some crazy stan-
dard the nontoxic stuff is supposed to meet. What makes these guys
tick? Are they in bed with the pharmaceutical industry?
Who isnt! And if so, what do you want to do about it?
Well, John, this has been an education. I am going back to the
ofce and assign staff to researching the Charter, the Regulated
Health Professions Act, all the rest of the laws involved with negli-
gence, harm, informed consent, etc., and I am going to have a look
at what the heck the College derives its powers from and what those
powers really areand Ill check out all relevant case law. Maybe you
better check my blood pressure as well, I am so mad I could spit. Anne
McDonald rises and grabs her bag in preparation for her departure.
Anne, sit down, will you, Dr. Goodenough says in a soft voice.
She sits. He looks at the carpet between his shoes and sighs long and
deep. Anne, I am a doctor, and I will be damned but I will not be a
drug company whore or a drug pusher. I am giving you a prescription
for bio-identical. And my advice is that you stop right nowcold
turkeytaking that crap Big Pharma duped us all into for so long. I
also want to do a battery of tests, and come to think of it, we better
check out your thyroid; those drugs and that DDT from back then are
really bad for thyroid function. it. Lets start with taking blood, OK?
He rises to go into the next room where blood samples are taken.
Butwhat about you? Arent you scared?
[expletive deleted] the College. Lets take your blood.
As Anne McDonald leaves his ofce, she says. I am ready to battle.
Dr. Goodenough smiles: Now go home and read that book by
Carl Elliot. You might need some Gravol before you start reading,
though. Anne McDonald goes to the door and Dr. Goodenough calls
after her, Anne, do NOT take Aspirin, but call me in the morning.
P.S. Even worse would be imagining a patient who suffered greatly
from conventional HRT, required treatment for blood clots and suf-
fered a heart attack, was taken off synthetic HRT and placed on bio-
identical hormonesonly to be told a couple of years later (December
2011), after feeling a lot better and no longer suffering from the side
effects of synthetic HRT, that her doctor can no longer prescribe the
bioidenticals for the same reasons given in the rst scenario above.
I
References
Testimony of the CPSOs prosecution expert, Dr. Anderson, in the disciplinary
investigation of Dr. Jozef Krop: vol. 17, pp. 235-265, vol. 18, pp. 94-97, pp. 4-
162, p. 63 lines 18-23, Application Record Tabs 21, 22 and 23. Also see
Glasnost Report 2011, the cases of Dr. Kooner, Dr. Krop, Dr. Adams etc.
The information on zero deaths in 27 years running attributable to nutritional
supplements used therapeutically see American Association of Poison Control
Centers at www.aapcc.dnn/NPDSPoisonData/
NPDSAnnualReports.aspx; vitamins and supplements are at the end
JAMAevidence: Users Guides to the Medical LiteratureA Manual for Evidence-
Based Clinical Practice, second ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008
Ross E. G. Upshur, If not evidence, then what? Or does medicine really need a
base?, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, vol. 8 (2), p. 113-119, 2002 (Dr.
Upshur is at Sunnybrook Hospital and the University of Toronto)
Trudo Lemmens, Leopards in the Temple: Restoring Scientic Integrity to the
Commercialized Research Scene, International and Comparative Health Law
EthicsA 25-Year Retrospective, Winter 2004, pp. 641-657 (Dr. Lemmens
teaches at the University of Toronto and is an internationally recognized expert
on medical ghost writing.)
A. R. Gaby MD, Nutritional Medicine, Fritz Perlberg, 2010
R. B. Silverman, The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug Action,
Second Edition, Elsevier, 2004
78 Creative Outrage
V. R. Preedy et al. Nutrition, Diet Therapy, and the Liver, CRC Press, 2010
K. N. Prasad, Micronutrients in Health and Disease, CRC Press, 2011
On the 15-fold surge in study retractions see G. Naik, Wall Street Journal, Aug.
10, 2011
For monthly updates on approved drugs being banned due to class action suits,
or FDA black box warnings, see the on-line newsletter Worst Pills Best Pills
The most current and comprehensive overview on fraud underpinning about
70% of all medical trials, including RCT, see University of Minnesota bioethicist
Carl Elliott, White Coat Black HatAdventures on the Dark Side of Medicine,
Beacon Press, 2010
On the problems caused by synthetic drugs, including over-the-counter drugs,
the best source is always the pharmacology section in Harrisons Principles of
Internal Medicine
A. D. Ruiz et al. Effectiveness of Compounded Bioidentical Hormone
Replacement Therapy: An Observational Cohort Study, BMC Womens Health,
Vol. 11:27, 2011
C. Dean MD, Hormone Balance, Adams Media, 2005for the history of
synthetic HRT, the research that showed its dangers, and the alternatives
developed by mainstream medicine in bioidentical substances.
For ongoing research into the toxicity of pharmaceutical drugs, fraud
in clinical trials, bias and misrepresentation of data on large random-
ized studies see especially the online medical journal PloS Medicine
(Public Library of Science-Medicine) which was founded by Nobel lau-
reate Harold Varmus, the director of the US National Institutes of
Health at the time of the founding of the PLoS family of journals,
explicitly undertaken in order to make the fraud underlying medical
research as transparent as possible.
Update Spring 2013
The regulatory powers-that-be received a couple blows to their arro-
gant egos:
1. The famous co-founder and past president of the American
Academy for Environmental Medicine, Dr. William Rea, won
against the infamous Texas Medical Board which had prosecuted
him more than a dozen times in an attempt to shut down the
Environmental Health centre Dr. Rea has run for decades. This
was the last time. This case brought the Association of American
Physicians and Surgeons into action and resulted in a law being
signed (HP 680) in Texas which brought into being reforms that
are also sorely needed in Canada. Among the provisions of this
new law are:
a) it is no longer legal to have anonymous complaintsthe exact
opposite of what the McGuinty government in Ontario signed
into law, discussed above as the snitch law.
b) The Texas Medical Board (the equivalent of Canadas Colleges,
such as the CPSO in Ontario) must also disclose the source of
complaints to the doctor when coming from an insurance com-
pany or a pharmaceutical company. Several doctors who were
inappropriately disciplined in Ontario, such as Dr. Frank
Adams, had their cases started by insurance companies. In the
case of Dr. Carolyn Dean the process began because the Sugar
Institute of Canada didnt like her comments on TV about
refined sugars health hazards. See Glasnost Report 2001 on
www.helkeferrie.com.
c) The most important item has to do with forcing the Texas
Medical Board to accept ndings of fact when made by an
administrative law judge.
80 Creative Outrage
We need a law like this in Canada to stop our regulatory authorities
from exercising their power arbitrarily, as they tend to do, and from
bypassing evidence when it suits them.
2. The famous cancer doctor, Burzynski nally can no longer be sued
by the FDA, the medical boards etc. His story was documented in
an excellent lm www.burzynskimovie.com which also is a treas-
ure drove of effective cancer therapies available today. All
charges against Dr. Burzynski were dismissed on November 19,
2012. His legal saga lasted almost two decades. His treatment is
now also listed on the website of the National Institutes of
Health. Google antineoplastons. The clinic can be contacted
through http://www.burzynskiclinic.com.
82 Creative Outrage
On January 2, 2013, I wrote to the CPSO requesting the information
on which their Complementary Medicine Policy was passed by
Council in 2012.
January 2, 2013
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
Dr. M. Lynne Thurling
80 College Street
Toronto, ON, M5G 2E2
Dear Dr. Thurling,
I am writing to you with a request. I understand that you were the
Chairperson of the committee that produced the
Complementary/Alternative Medicine Policy which was passed by
Council in 2011. I was one of the invited commentators on that poli-
cy when it was rst circulated for public comment in its draft form.
One of the questions I raised at that time was about what medical
publications, books, journals etc were consulted by this committee
when drafting the CAM policy. As far as I know, it is not as yet known
what literature and research materials the committee consulted over
that 2-year preparatory period when the draft version was being writ-
ten. In issue 4, 2011, of the MD Dialogue this research process was
described as having taken place, but unlike standard publications on
policy and guidelines published in journals, by research institutions
etc, the nal CAM Policy text does not provide a reference list show-
ing what the policy review relied upon.
Would it possible to obtain the bibliography of the materials your
committee consulted?
Many thanks and best wishes for the New Year,
Sincerely yours,
Helke Ferrie
Dated February 15, 2013 I received a reply which is reproduced on
the next page. It states that those sources that informed the content
of the nal version of the [CAM] policy are listed as references on the
front page of the policy. Those listed are
1. the various legislative references, i.e. the laws governing health
practitioners in Ontario, and
2. the internal, CPSO-generated reference materials, namely: The
Practice Guide: Medical Professionalism and College Policies;
Consent to Medical Treatment; Medical Records; Changing Scope
of Practice. (www.cpso.on.cago to policies and publications.)
None of these are references in the generally accepted sense of the
word, i.e. publications from mainstream medical journals, textbooks,
reports from government or university-afliated institutions in which
researchers and clinicians who work in that eld (i.e. CAM) and then
publish their theoretical and clinical ndings in PubMed-registered
peer-reviewed journals. To get an idea of what I mean, go back to the
end of my submission to the CPSO above and look at my references.
The literature of this type on complementary and alternative medi-
cine is immense. And given that the team appointed by the CPSO
claims to have studied it for two years, as stated in the MD Dialogue
issue 4 of 2011, before writing their nal draft policy, it seems only
reasonable to ask: What did you people study?
Well, I guess well never know what they did study for two years.
Whatever it was, it could not have been based on any published
research materials, such as the ones I citedand that is just an inn-
itesimal fraction of what is out there. If they had, this CAM policy
would not be as fact-deprived and so patronizing in its tone. They
may or may not have read medical journals and books on comple-
mentary medicine, and we will never know what they accepted and
rejected.
84 Creative Outrage
All we now know is that they did not even meet the standard of a
pharmaceutical companys published research on their products
they provide lots of sources from the medical literature in all their
publications. True, Big Pharma messes with the conclusions, mas-
sages the data, picks and chooses evidence as it ts the predetermined
aim of bamboozling as many doctors as possible into prescribing the
product regardless of its clinical value, and minimizes or just takes
out actual harm observed in trials. Big Pharma then hangs on res-
olutely to their raw data, hidden away in some Fort Knox type safe,
to make sure nobody gets a chance to go over the full details collect-
ed from those drug-company-nanced trials and nds out what real-
ly happened. As you will learn from articles yet to come in the rest of
this book, this behavior is being challenged vigorously by main-
stream medical scientists, and the good news is that wherever the true
facts nally seep out, there has been hell to pay.
The CPSO doesnt massage datano need to even do that if the
decision is made to tell nobody anything at all about any data. All
we are given is references to their own, earlier policiesequally
devoid of science-based published supportand thus this new CAM
policy must be divinely or otherwise mysterious inspired: the result of
a secret communion of like minds. The question is, however, why this
nal CAM policy, created as it appears to be, from thin air or unstat-
ed private opinion, should be something every doctor in Ontario
should be expected to obey, why doctors and patients alike in Ontario
should be guided by this policy, and by what authority the CPSO can
deny its members, and the patients they treat, the basic right to fac-
tual verication.
The CPSOs crest, dating back to the 1850s when it was rst creat-
ed, can be found on all its publications and its letterhead. It is also
reproduced below. It contains the Latin words Fidus in Arcanis which
translates to Faithful to the Secrets.
However, science and secrets are mutually exclusive. Doctors guid-
ed by secrets emperil their professional ethics, while patients fool
enough to blindly trust the implementation of secret-based policies
are in potentially fatal denial.
Crest of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
86 Creative Outrage
Lyme Disease
1. An Emerging Epidemic
February 2009
The physicians challenge is the curing of disease,
educating the people in the laws of health,
and preventing the spread of plagues and pestilence.
Sir William Osler (18491919)
A profound medical mystery is unfolding in Canada: Lyme Disease,
an infectious disease which is especially serious in its chronic form,
has become an epidemic throughout North America. And even
though it is successfully treatable with antibiotics, its victims are
toldoften even by doctorsthat Lyme doesnt exist. Since the diag-
nosis and treatment of infectious diseases is the very basis of modern
medicine and constitutes one of the truly great achievements in med-
ical history, and since antibiotics are among the few really useful
drugs modern pharmacology has developed, Lyme Disease should be
anything but mysterious. In fact, though, the way Lyme is handled by
medical authorities and government agencies has by now entered the
domain of criminality.
Lyme Disease, rst identied in 1909 in Europe and re-discovered
in Lyme, Connecticut in 1975, is transmitted by a tick that generally
lives on deer and sometimes also on cats and dogs. The tick harbors
a spirochetal bacterium that exists in some 200 variants that evolved
to adapt to various environments throughout the world. Hence, it is
not surprising that the international medical literature on Lyme
Disease exceeds 19,000 articles. In its acute form, Lyme is relatively
easily and quickly treated, but in its chronic form it is nothing less
than a public health disasterand we are right in the middle of it.
Last November, a patient group called Lyme Action Group (LAG)
appeared on the scene and held a press conference in Queens Park,
sponsored by MPP Monte Kwinter. In their press release, LAG
announced that Denying Lyme is A Crime. They proved their asser-
tion. Then they showed the internationally acclaimed documentary
movie Under Our Skin at the Whole Life Expo a week later. This
January, LAG formally approached the Ontario government by writ-
ing to Premier McGuinty, the Minister of Health, and the Attorney
General, providing them and other MPPs with information on the
facts on Lyme Disease in Ontario and Canada.
The trigger for this campaign was that the College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Ontario has once again initiated a disciplinary
action against Dr. Jozef Krop for (successfully) treating chronic Lyme
patients. This is the same physician known throughout North
America for being prosecuted by the CPSO in the 1990s for diagnos-
ing and treating Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.
The CPSO controls the licenses of doctors in Ontario and has dis-
tinguished itself over the past decade by steadfastly maintaining a
standard of medicine which the rest of the world no longer shares
specically in the areas of environmentally-caused illness, asthma,
cancer, pain management, and now once again with regard to Lyme
Disease. The CPSOs interpretation of maintaining the standards of
practice can be dangerous to patients in Ontario and often is fatal
to the professional life of those doctors who practice according to the
latest published medical research.
This unfolding story is so appalling that I am at a loss for words
and shall let LAG speak to Vitality readers directly. Here are excerpts
from the letters they wrote to the Ontario government. If you want to
help Lyme patients, nd out if your chronic disease is actually Lyme-
related, or if medical progress is something you cherish and want to fos-
ter. I suggest you get involved.
88 Creative Outrage
Excerpts from the Letters To Premier Mcguinty, The Minister of
Health, and the Attorney General of Ontario
According to the international medical literature, in North America
Lyme Disease is an emerging epidemic, larger than AIDS and cancer
combined. Being an infectious disease, the seriousness of this situa-
tion cannot be overstated: Medical science has recognized the great
variety of symptoms this infection can exhibit in its chronic state (by
incapacitating the immune system) and refers to Lyme as the Great
Imitator. Up to 50% of patients with Multiple Sclerosis, and also
many cases of Parkinsons, ALS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,
Fibromyalgia, Arthritis, Alzheimers, Crohns and Scleroderma are
now understood to stem from originally undiagnosed or untreated
Lyme Disease that progressed to chronicity. Because Lyme spirochetes
cross the placenta, many cases of autism have been shown to be
Lyme-mediated as well.
The tragedyand hopelies in the fact that Lyme disease is pre-
ventable, detectable, and successfully treatable with readily available
antibiotics, even in its chronic stage. In the USA, the Center for
Disease Control red-agged Lyme Disease in October 2008 as an
emerging epidemic; its incidence has increased since 1992 by over
100%.
Because Lyme Disease is one of the most serious infectious dis-
eases, it is a ticking time-bomb for the medical blood and organ
donor supply... Many countries, including the USA, require donor
screening for Lyme Disease. Yet, Canadian Blood Services has no pol-
icy in this regard.
...the tests covered by OHIP yield more than 60% false negatives
in all tested acute cases; these misdiagnosed patients then become
chronic casesfor which the available tests are 90% false negative...
those tests which are proven internationally to be reliable are not
available and can only be obtained, at the patients expense, from
laboratories in the USA and Europe. Astonishingly, doctors in Ontario
cannot order those conrmatory tests, even though they are required
by the standards of all infectious disease experts ... Anonymous lab
technicians are therefore practicing medicine without a license by
making decisions, without access to the patients history or physical
examination record, on whether or not a conrmatory test should be
done. These technicians are not legally accountable. Doctors in
Ontario are prevented from treating acute and chronic Lyme Disease
in accordance with international scientic standards; they are, in
fact, unable to perform their legally and professionally mandated
tasks; most are not even aware of this unacceptable situation due to
a lack of government policy.
... the Canadian Medical Association informed its membership
more than eight years ago that Lyme Disease is endemic in Canada
(see CMAJ May 30, 2000) ... Ontario doctors cannot apply interna-
tionally known protocols for the treatment of Chronic Lyme Disease,
because the existing OHIP-mediated policy prevents it; this policy is
condoned by the CPSO, which has no up-to-date direction from the
Ministry of Health to provide to its members.
... this profoundly disturbing situation involves an important
legal action that will very soon affect Ontario and Canada in gener-
al. Historically, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases
Society (ILADS), with the Chronic Lyme Disease Research Centre at
Columbia University and research centers in Europe, provided the
bulk of the existing and ongoing research into the successful diagnos-
tic and treatment protocols veried thousands of times in patients.
However, the members of the guidelines committee of the Infectious
Disease Society of America (IDSA) insisted that Lyme Disease should
only be treated with antibiotics in its early, acute phase and only for
six weeks (regardless of patient history and the available scientic lit-
erature to the contrary); they opined that the observed chronic man-
ifestations are due to a hypothetical, and as yet unproven, post-Lyme
inammatory response. This resulted in an antitrust action initiated
by the Attorney General of Connecticut who found the IDSA guide-
lines lacking in published empirical support, awed, corrupted and
biased by conicts of interest, and he set aside these guidelines in May
90 Creative Outrage
of 2008. The new, court-ordered, and independently produced, guide-
lines will appear in 2009 and be communicated through the medical
journals to doctors everywhere. Thus, appropriate government policy
has become imperative.
Considerable case law and legal decisions exist in Canada, which
since the early 1990s, have already established that no preference
may be given to just one point of view in medical practice. Yet,
instead of doctors and patients being protected and supported accord-
ingly, Ontario doctors, if they are informed about Lyme Disease at all,
generally only are familiar with those now defunct IDSA guidelines
and are expected to abide by them, being OHIP mediated and CPSO
condoned.
Throughout the 1990s, a similar tragedy unfolded with regard to
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), also called Environmental
Illness (EI). In 1999, ironically, the internationally recognized clinical
criteria for MCS were published simultaneously in leading medical
journals on June 19, the very same day on which one of Canadas
leading MCStreating physicians (with excellent, documented
patient outcome) was found guilty by the CPSO of diagnosing and
treating MCS, and even though the international criteria were known
for the past four years, he was accordingly reprimanded in 2003. The
CPSO had chosen not to accept the international research. Now this
case has become one of the tragic absurdities of medical history, espe-
cially because in 2007 the Human Rights Commission of Canada
afrmed the right of Canadians to treatment for MCS, and as Quebec
and Ontario passed laws against cosmetic pesticide usea major
cause of MCS.
In December 2008, Germany afrmed MCS as an ofcial diagno-
sis and incorporated it into their medical, liability, and labor legisla-
tion. And yet, 10 years after the clinical criteria were dened by Johns
Hopkins Medical School and internationally published, to this day
the CPSO website carries the text of that 2003 reprimand: While he
may hold strong beliefs in the appropriateness of his diagnostic meth-
ods (on MCS), his diagnostic conclusions, and his methods of treat-
ment, he must make it clear to his patients that they are simply
thatbeliefs. He must be candid in stating that they are unsupport-
ed by scientically-acceptable evidence.
Given that in Ontario physicians treating Lyme Disease are now
also intimidated, and some are under threat of disciplinary investiga-
tion for merely recognizing the existence of chronic Lyme Disease,
does this mean that patients suffering from new diseases, or old ones
not seen for a long time, are expected to put their symptoms on hold
and ignore international research until the CPSO provides ofcial
approval? MPP Monte Kwinter once observed at a University of
Toronto medical conference that, as far as the CPSO is concerned, if
it aint invented in Ontario it aint invented.
The CPSO is on record in the 2001 Glasnost Report for having
taken the same approach to the new and emerging treatment proto-
cols for chronic pain, asthma, and allergyand now also to chronic
Lyme Disease. We feel this is so because no safeguards exist in the
RHPA that require regulatory bodies to move with the times and to
make positive patient outcome central to the law. The Glasnost
Report... focused on the lack of checks and balances in the Section 75
provisions of the RHPA which (permits)... astonishing disregard for
patients right to treatment choice and (ignores) the physicians right
to explore all available medical literature for treatment options. This
is true once again for chronic Lyme Disease patientsand the doctors
able and willing to treat them.
The Challenge Ahead
Invariably Lyme patients and doctors will ask, How is this possible?
Some years ago, exasperated by the problems then facing environ-
mental illness patients, I asked the same question of criminal lawyer
Michael Code, then of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell and now a provincial
court judge. His reply was: It is not necessary to understand the
motive for a crime. It is only necessary to prove that it is a crime.
92 Creative Outrage
To stop this crime it is necessary to be correctly informed. The
sources given below provide the best available information. Once you
are informed, join the efforts of LAG and CanLyme by writing to your
MPP and demanding action. Canada cannot afford another blood
scandal or another SARS crisis. In Ontario, patients and doctors alike
cannot be expected to endure the policies of antiquated regulatory
agencies that ultimately ruin human lives.
Also, Ontarios Regulated Health Professions Act must become
patient-centered and research-user-friendly for doctors and reect
what Health Minister Caplan was reported to have said in the Toronto
Star last November: I want to support a health-care system that allows
people to... try new things. Innovation should be the hallmark.
LAG summarized the Lyme Disease crisis best when they wrote in
their January 14 letter to the Attorney General: This untenable situ-
ation ensures that the lowest common denominator of medical
knowledge will continue to maintain a correspondingly low standard
of innovation, and Chronic Lyme Disease patients will have to con-
tinue seeking help abroad. We feel, this is an intolerable situation for
patients and for society.
2. Lyme Disease Resource Book For Canadians May 2010
It is preposterous, but Canada fell through that infamous rabbit hole.
Thousands of Canadians, whose numbers are growing annually, are
now at the mercy of the policies of our medical Wonderland, where
things have become curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. In
this Canada Wonderland we nd a Lyme disease policy which bears
no resemblance to clinical observation, little to scientic research,
and it ignores the fundamental principles of public health. Infectious
diseases are very bad newsthey are like an uncontained house re.
Ironically, they also are the one universal emergency modern medi-
cine really knows how to treat and prevent. Triumph over infectious
disease is the basis of modern medicines fame. It is, therefore,
astounding that Lyme disease is virtually ignored in Canada.
Lyme is one of the nastiest infectious diseases capable of causing
enormous nancial damage to any healthcare system. Over the past
three decades, a medical-ethical cesspool has emerged characterized
by competing interests involving especially the American private
insurance companies, Big Pharma, and some medical associations
with certain prominent members willing to work for the benet of
those industries, instead of their patients. This mess spilled over into
Canada from the US, where Lyme disease rst broke out in 1975 in
the little town of Lyme in Connecticut. Lyme disease itself is very old;
archaeological evidence goes back some 50,000 years. However, the
currently evolved Lyme-causing bacterium is more severe and almost
always appears almost always in company with many other co-
infecting bacteria.
I spent the last two years editing a book on Lyme disease in
Canada, available now, just in time for Maythe month the US gov-
ernment declared Lyme Disease Awareness Month. I would like you
to become aware of what my co-authors and I have learned about
this infectious disease and how this epidemic is being mismanaged by
our public health authorities, our Ministers of Health, Health
Canada, and those medical regulatory authorities who control doc-
tors licenses. This book presents the science, the politics, the treat-
ment and testing protocols that actually are documented to work,
and ways in which you can help to stop this unfolding disaster.
Ending DenialThe Lyme Disease EpidemicA Canadian Public
Health Disaster is written by patients, doctors, researchers, politi-
cians, and me. Each section of the book deals with one area of con-
cern and then adds the representative research papers whose ndings
are beyond doubt. We also included the most successful and science-
based treatment protocols as well as an entire section on the most reli-
able testingnone of them are available in Canada!
The hottest topic in this book is the Canadian patient experience:
that nightmarish runaround caused by doctors denying Lyme; then it
tells of the ordeal of doctors in danger of losing their licenses because
they do diagnose and treat Lyme patients regardless of that ofcial
94 Creative Outrage
denialand they do so with astonishing success when daring to use
international protocols; included is a legal the opinion on the way
Canada literally breaks federal and provincial law with its refusal to
acknowledge the existence of appropriate tests and treatment proto-
cols; we discuss the potentially disastrous consequences this somnam-
bulant attitude presents for our national blood supply, which is once
again endangeredthis time not by AIDS or Hepatitis C, but by the
bacteria which cause Lyme: Canada does not use the international
donor questionnaires to rule of Lyme infected donors.
Conservative MP Terence Young, one of Canadas true public
guardians (see my article on his latest book Death by Prescription,
Vitality May 2009) wrote the foreword in which he explains the under-
lying medical corruption. One of British Columbias former NDP
MLAs, David Cubberley, provided a whole chapter on the Lyme mess
in that province.
These authors explore Canadas failure to recognize, leave alone
deal appropriately, with what the World Health Organization and
public health authorities world-wide have declared to be the fastest
growing vector-borne infectious disease in the world. The US Centers
for Disease Control conrmed Lyme an epidemic in 2008. The US
Environmental Protection Agency and public health authorities pro-
vides exhaustive information on prevention and surveillance, and
the US Congress and Senate recently provided funds for an appropri-
ate nationwide Lyme policy. Strangely, Canadian authorities imagine
that Lyme-carrying ticks that ride on deer, migratory birds, dogs and
mice moving over the continent present less of a danger of Lyme
when entering Canadian air space.
Interestingly, some of the most important research into Lyme dis-
ease comes from Canadian scientists whose work is read and imple-
mented everywhere else but here; their publications started in the
1990s, some important ones are found in our very own Canadian
Medical Association Journal. A couple of the most recent ones on Lyme
vectors are included in this book also.
Whatever awareness exists in Canada about Lyme was generated
by patient support groups found now in almost every province. One
of the services they provide is to help Canadians nd treatmentusu-
ally in the US and Europe. Some, like the national CanLyme, have
been working to educate both the public and doctors for over twenty
years: thats not a typo! Canadian medical and public health author-
ities have been in sleepy denial for two decades and are showing no
signs of waking up. What comes to mind is the announcement made
for Alice upon arriving in Wonderland: We are all mad here.
Consistent with this logically inverted world is how the formidable
resources of the entire public health system were accessed for SARS,
West Nile Virus, and the positively ridiculous H1N1 hysteria (the
H1N1 u was declared a fraud a few weeks ago, following a formal
investigation by the European Unions parliament). In terms of num-
bers, SARS etc were eabites compared to what the tick-bite-caused
Lyme disease is doing. The US Centers for Disease Control estimate
200,000 new infected cases occur annually, most near the Canadian
border on the East and West coasts. True, SARS and West Nile virus
can kill a person whose immune system is compromised, and that
fact is important and requires correct attention and prevention, but
consider that unrecognized and untreated Lyme disease usually
becomes chronic and then triggers Alzheimers, Crohns disease,
Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple sclerosis, Fibromyalgia and Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome, heart disease, Parkinsons, Scleroderma, ADHD,
and infected mothers pass it on through placental blood to their
unborn babies or through breast milk later on, causing central nerv-
ous system damage consistent with autism. An infected person can
pass Lyme on through sexual intercourse and saliva. The discoverer
of the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes Lyme, the Swiss
researcher Willy Burgdorfer, got Lyme himself through merely skin
contact with the urine of Lyme-infected laboratory mice. One Lyme
disease researcher refers to this illness as the poor cousin to the 19th
century syphilis epidemic that devastated entire populations.
Among infectious diseases, Lyme is the perfect storm.
96 Creative Outrage
If merely 10% of those chronic diseases Lyme can trigger were
actually diagnosed as Lyme through the availability of reliable tests
and then treated, literally billions of dollars would be saved, to say
nothing of preventing that unimaginable human misery. Indeed,
some countries like Sweden actually calculated that cost and acted
accordinglythey didnt fall through the rabbit hole.
Internationally licensed laboratories providing tests specic to
Lyme disease in all its manifestations are allowed to be used by
Canadian doctors. The Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network
issued guidelines in 2006 which strongly discourage using any of
the more sophisticated and reliable tests available in the US and
Europe, simply asserting that they are not reliablewithout a single
piece of supporting evidence from the literature. Those guidelines
only recommend an antiquated 40-year old testing procedure known
in the medical literature to produce up to 90% false negative results.
With those kinds of test results generated from coast to coast to coast,
we naturally cannot have Lyme in Canada. Perfect Wonderland logic.
Incomprehensibly, the testing situation in Canada is such that not
the examining doctor, but anonymous lab technicians (who have
never seen the patient and test the blood sample with a useless test
they dont know is useless) inform the doctor on the test report
whether this patient has Lyme! After that, no further action can be
taken. Behold the awesome infallibility of Wonderland assumptions!
Of course, the denial of Lyme is hotly denied by the
Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada
(AMMI) whose spokesperson asserted indignantly in a November 20,
2009, press release, following the recent CTV W5 story on the plight
of Lyme patients in Canada, that our doctors are well-trained in rec-
ognizing Lyme and treating it. Indeed, what they learn and then duti-
fully follow, is what is found in the guidelines of the Infectious Disease
Society of America (IDSA) whose views on Lyme were the subject of an
anti-trust investigation by the Attorney General of Connecticut, start-
ing in 2008, for cooking the evidence, ignoring the medical research
that contradicted already entrenched views, nding guideline panel
members to be in the pockets of the insurance or drug industry etc.
The evidence is extremely disturbing to read and my advice is: pass
the Gravol rst.
The key problem with those IDSA guidelines, which Canada treats
as gospel, and which got the IDSA into trouble with the law and the
US government, is their denial of the existence of chronic Lyme dis-
ease; refusal to use and recommend the sophisticated reliable tests
now available; dismissal of the literature and clinical results that con-
tradict their views; and insistence that alleged chronic Lyme must be
(no proof provided) an autoimmune response not treatable by antibi-
otics. This rigid and clinically and scientically insupportable stance
is very lucrative to the insurance industry. The US has plenty of Mad
Hatters, and a great many of them are the source of this controversy.
However, in the US patients, doctors and legislators have fought back
and even established a top-notch research centre dedicated to chron-
ic Lyme disease at Columbia University and 17 States have passed
laws or regulations specically to protect doctors who treat chronic
Lyme patients.
Those IDSA guidelines were set aside by court agreementsome-
thing Canadian infectious disease doctors dont appear to know any-
thing about and Health Canada continues to follow the IDSA guide-
lines as if nothing happened. Those few that question Wonderland
logic are in for a shock. Any doctor daring to assert, as Alice did to the
Duchess, that I have the right to think and trains with internation-
al Lyme disease experts, will be given the answer Alice got: Just
about as much right as pigs have to y. Prosecution by the provin-
cial College of Physicians and Surgeons, especially in B.C. and
Ontario, is the frequent outcome of exercising the right to independ-
ent medical reasoning.
Almost daily, I receive calls from Lyme patients, who are desper-
ately looking for doctors. If they have money, they stand a chance at
a cure because they can get it outside Canada. Former BC MLA David
Cubberley (now a director of CanLyme) describes this situation chap-
ter 6 in this book: The simple fact is that we have imported a prob-
98 Creative Outrage
lem created in the hothouse of free enterprise medicine to the south
of us, which combines a policy favorable to private insurers with the
settling of scores in disputes between schools of thought in medicine
Canada has internalized the toxic byproducts of an American dis-
pute over a disease, which in the rest of the world is generally appro-
priately treated Here, patients run into a Berlin Wall of indifference
and encounter a closed medical mind. In Canada patients with
chronic Lyme either live with severe pain and disability, or they sell
their homes, go to the United States and buy access to antibiotics
through the private health care market. What an ugly paradox:
denied diagnosis and treatment under [legally compromised] US
guidelines in Canadas public healthcare system, you have to go to
the home of private medicine for therapy!
If you are bitten by one of the 15 species of Lyme-bearing ticks and
get sick, you and your doctor are highly unlikely to know what is ail-
ing you. By the time you are really sick, many diagnostic labels will
be tried on you. Canadians who suggest that a Lyme diagnosis should
be considered, and hopefully ruled out, will more than likely run into
the Red Queen logic who dismissed evidence and asserted: Sentence
rst. Verdict later. You will be sentenced to chronic life-long illness
and often death because everybody is agreed what the verdict is
Lyme is no problem in Canada.
Alice escapes from that crazy world by a sudden insight. She tells
the assembled court and the Red Queen: You are nothing but a pack
of cards! It is essential for the health of this nation that Canadians
recognize that this Lyme policy lacks substance. Thats why we under-
took this book project.
Those insupportable Canadian Lyme guidelines have to be
scrapped; they are exclusively based on the legally compromised
IDSA guidelines and make no reference to the international protocols
and trivialize especially chronic Lyme conditions. Lab technicians
cannot decide what is definitive evidence for Lyme infection.
Provincial governments, in charge of health care delivery, cannot be
permitted to deny the availability of international protocols. The
integrity of our blood supply cannot again be allowed to be in jeop-
ardy. Our doctors must be allowed to think when confronting emerg-
ing medical conditions without fear of sacricing everything, espe-
cially their professional integrity. Every family doctor must learn how
to recognize and treat Lyme. This is as basic as washing ones hands.
Canadians must join international efforts to contain this infectious
disease and to expect as a matter of course that every spring Lyme-
tick endemic parks and areas in the country carry warning and
instruction signs.
This book, the proceeds of which go entirely towards Lyme aware-
ness work, will be a useful tool in this necessary and overdue public
health campaign. You will learn from it how to protect yourself, your
loved ones, and the health of Canada.
3. The Voice Of The People On Lyme Disease May 2012
The ancient Romans, not known for their user-friendly policies, knew
when to listen to the vox populi; even emperors felt the heat when
a lot of people made a noise about the same issue. Rome at its height
held about a million people. So, what does it take to get the McGuinty
government to face the actual facts about one of the worst infectious
diseases in the world? How about 3.5 million Ontarians?
MPP Bob Bailey (Conservative, Sarnia-Lampton) presented a peti-
tion (November 23, 24, 29, 30 and December 6, 2011) requesting that
Ontarios antiquated Lyme disease testing protocol, which was devel-
oped almost half a century ago and is documented to be up to 95%
false negative, be replaced by internationally recognized, scientical-
ly validated, reliable, new, FDA-approved tests. This petition also
asked that the government direct Ontario doctors to learn to treat its
most devastating form, Chronic Lyme Disease, in accordance with
up-to-date diagnostic and treatment protocols. The petition empha-
sizes that this tick-borne illness mimics catastrophic and expensive
diseases like Multiple sclerosis, Alzheimers, arthritic diabetes,
Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia and that these are facts published
100 Creative Outrage
since the mid-1990s also in the Canadian Medical Association Journal
(CMAJ). About one hundred Ontario municipalities formally
endorsed this petition: thats 3.5 million Ontarians.
The response from the Minister of Health, the Hon. Deb Matthews,
was posted March 19th on the government website announcing This
government is committed to protecting the safety of all Ontarians
and their families from preventable vector-borne diseases. She lists
what the government did since 2010when incidentally the book
Ending DenialThe Lyme Disease Epidemic: A Canadian Public Health
Disaster appeared and was distributed to all federal and provincial
politicians, Canadas medical associations, and our universities.
The Minister tells of governmental awareness campaigns, such as
Lets Target Lyme, an information effort for the public and health
care providers on tick recognition, symptoms, and protection meas-
ures (www.ontario.ca/lyme). Public Health Ontario, she wants the
millions of petitioners to know, is doing everything possible in synch
with the federal government. Finally, the Minister produces what
she appears to see as a condence-inspiring statistic: over the past
three years the number of cases of Lyme disease has remained fair-
ly stable at approximately 100 per year. We are to believe that this
is due to increase in testing and surveillance. Oddly, right across the
border Lyme cases are increasing exponentially documenting new
annual infection cases in the tens of thousands in each of most
Eastern seaboard states; the same is true for Europe.
Oh Lord, give me patience, but hurry, for my heart is sinking into
black despair!
The Ministers response is appalling: it does not address the
irrefutable, documented facts outlined in the petition, bypasses the
core problem of Chronic Lyme disease, ignores the key demandcur-
rent, scientically validated and reliable testing which is not avail-
able in Ontario and forces those who can afford it to go to the US
and simply re-afrms that all is well with that bogus two-tiered
ELISA-plus Western-blot test which MPP Baileys petition wants to be
make history. How can a government defend a test that is known to
be 95% false negative? Even if it is supported by federal guidelines?
Truly, Health Canada sees no evil, Public Health hears no evil, and
the Ministry of Health speaks no evil.
Healthcare delivery is provincial responsibilityso, the Lyme bug
stops here. This inappropriate testing serves the appearance of gov-
ernment diligence in the midst of the storm of the worlds fastest pro-
liferating infectious diseasefaster than tuberculosis and malaria
(WHO 2008).
Those 100 cases must have been identied by that antiquated test-
ing protocol which amazingly only recognizes non-North American
variants of Lyme bacteria; that means they fell into that potential 5%
correctly detected group. Actually, given the soaring increase in all
those chronic disease listed in MPP Baileys petition, there likely are 95%
more undetected Lyme infections happening annually which necessari-
ly go untreated and, as the possibility of a treatable infection is simply
not part of a differential diagnosis, these patients go on to become the
victims of those other catastrophic diseases one of whose causes can be
Lyme; that would be in theory at least another 1,700 cases annually.
What is really terrifying is the fact that Lyme is transmissible
through the placenta as well as sexually. The rst documented case
of sexually transmitted Lyme was former US President George W.
Bush Jr. who transmitted it to the former First Lady. So, despite the
huge advances medicine made in infectious disease prevention,
detection, and treatment, here we go back to the 19th century when
syphilis was the equivalent our current Lyme disease epidemic.
The April issue of the Journal of Parasitology reports that millions
of Lyme disease vector ticks are dispersed annually by songbirds
across Canada. The samples taken from 42 bird species identied
Lyme infected ticks throughout Canada all the way to the Yukon,
causing Canadians to be exposed to this infection locally without
any history of travel into endemic areas. More than 50 strains of the
Lyme-causing Borellia burgdorferi are known to be strictly North
American variants, yet Canadian testing laboratories have not yet
considered geographic and genome sequence variation resulting in
clinicians [being] unaware of the genetic heterogeneity of these
bacteria; naturally they must miss a correct diagnosis.
In December 2010 the Journal of Clinical Microbiology published
a severe critique of our testing protocol by infectious disease special-
ists at Sick Childrens Hospital in Toronto; this study was funded and
co-authored by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The authors dis-
cuss the case of a Lyme-infected child whose Canadian test was nega-
tive, but the Lyme-specic treatment was undertaken on the basis of
symptoms and history and continued regardless of the test result, sav-
ing the childs life.
In 2010 when I co-authored and published for the Lyme Action
Group and the national CanLyme Ending Denial, I never dreamed
that I myself would become infected with Lyme in 2011as did my
husband, and two of my granddaughters, and that I would also nurse
a Chronic Lyme patient through her pregnancy. Nine months were
spent worrying about the high probability of a brain-damaged baby
being born, because Lyme spirochetes attack the developing fetal
brain. Astonishingly, the mother obtained three (!) positive serology
tests over the course of three months in the rst trimester, all by that
outdated Ontario protocol MPP Bailey petitioned the government
about. She was infected outside Canada. The Canadian ELISA proto-
col cannot pick up infections contracted within Canada through
those species variants that are endemic North America. Our conti-
nental variants of Borrelia burgdorferi can be delivered through
migratory birds, deer ticks, cats, dogs, moose, mosquitoes, male
sperm, placental blood, human tears, and breast milk. Yet, her infec-
tious disease specialist who saw our pregnant patient simply
announced that she could not possibly have Lyme, even though the
Ontario test results were in his hands. A fair guess would be that he
did not know what to do about Lyme.
Any reader will wonder why only foreign bugs qualify under OHIP.
This is because in Canada the two most denitive antibody respons-
es, named bands 31 and 34, which clinch the presence of Borrelia
spirochetes, are omitted from the ELISA testing protocol. Our preg-
nant patient had positive Ontario test results because she was infect-
ed with an Asian variant of Borrelia burgdorferi that the Ontario test
does recognize.
In Ontario, a self-satised blind government appears to lead a
medical profession kept blind too, with a testing protocol that ensures
everybody stays blind, because that test too is almost totally blind,
occasionally able to recognize a few cases and thereby lull us all into
a totally false sense of public health security. How are doctors sup-
posed to know how to recognize Lyme disease when our testing pro-
tocol prevents recognition so perfectly? When they do see it, they are
unprepared to treat it. All that sophisticated medical research pub-
lished in the most prestigious international journals is kept out of
medical practice by a government policy that ensures complex new
scientic discoveries about Lyme do not confuse medical minds with
the true facts about this messy disease. A friend of mine summarized
current government policy beautifully: All we need to knock off the
human race is a Lyme tick to wreck our immune systems and a cell
phone to fry our brains. (See my April feature in Vitality.)
Our family got help fastthrough an ILADS-trained physician
and our pregnant friend was treated with daily antibiotic shots dur-
ing the crucial months of pregnancy when additionally Lyme-medi-
ated potential kidney failure in the mother needed constant monitor-
ing with various antibiotics. During the rst six months ultrasounds
showed that the fetus was abnormally small, but as soon as the
appropriate antibiotic protocol commenced, the baby grew fast to a
normal size. Finally, a Lyme-literate homeopath, midwife, and a pro-
fessor of obstetrics brought about that rare and wonderful event: a
baby grown in a Chronic Lyme patients body but born Lyme-free
weighing 7 pounds 9 ounces; the mother is in equally good health
and six weeks post-partum had a negative Lyme serology. This suc-
cess happened despite Ontarios insupportable policy which mis-
guides Ontarios infectious disease doctors. All the thanks go to the
research of Dr. Charles Ray Jones, an expert on Lyme in pregnancy
who presented last October at the annual international ILADS confer-
ence, held in Toronto for the rst time. And yes, the rest of us are also
on the mend.
Who benets from this insupportable government policy? Jim
Wilson, founder and director of the national patient support group,
CanLyme, agrees with the author of the famous book Cure Unknown,
Pamela Weintraub, writing that the consistent downplaying of the
severity of Lyme disease, only benets the global medical insurers,
who underwrite all of our employee disability coverage who do not
want to incur the cost of this global pandemic, and the workers com-
pensation boards across Canada. The pharmaceutical industry bene-
ts greatly by inventing a new drug to treat each of the many symp-
toms of Lyme Disease, making billions of dollars globally while doing
no research to treat the cause of the disease or to nd better diagnos-
tic tools.
Under the leadership of Jim Wilson the Lyme-aficted residents of
BC have worked for more than two decades now to get the attention
of their provincial government. Naturopaths in British Columbia,
Jim writes, who have passed the pharmacology exams have been
allowed to prescribe and several have stepped up to the plate by diag-
nosing and treating patients who require antibiotics. We are hoping
the situation is about to improve again in BC. In 2010 the BC govern-
ment, in response to pressure exerted by the Canadian Lyme Disease
Foundation and patients across the province, announced the opening
of a Complex Chronic Disease Clinic. The clinic will focus on chronic
Lyme Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Lupus.
Board members from CanLyme and representatives from the other
disorder groups have played a limited but hopeful role in the set up
of the clinic Interviews for the medical director position for this new
BC clinic, housed at the BC Children and Womens Hospital in
Vancouver, were completed at the end of March, 2012. The clinic is to
be operational by May 1st, 2012.
Terrible as Lyme disease is, it is also true that some of the nest
medical minds have gured out its deep and complex puzzles so that
many treatment protocols have been developed, some of which do
not require antibiotics. Most interesting is the work of Dr. Dietrich
Klinghardt who has treated Lyme for decades and discovered that
recovery by any treatment protocol mandates that the patient be
fully protected from EMF radiation. In the presence of cell phone radi-
ation, for example, Lyme bacteria and their co-infections thrive and
are able to evade therapeutic interventions. His Lyme patients must
switch off main breakers at night and avoid all forms of wireless tech-
nology while undergoing treatment. There is a wealth of information
out there about healing from Lyme.
But the microbial arms race is far from over: we now learn from
a Yale University researcher, Dr. Durland Fish, that there exists yet
another variant of the Lyme-causing bacterium, called Borrelia
miyamotoi, also found in deer ticks. Initially it causes much higher
fevers than the traditional Lyme bacteria. In the US, the National
Institutes of Health refused funding for its study repeatedly until
forced into action by Russian scientists who proved its existence and
that it causes Lyme disease.
What will it take before Ontario gets real on this issue? One ray of
hope comes from MPP Bailey and his colleague MPP Kim Craitor
(Liberal, Niagara Falls) whose admirable response to this Ministerial
non-reply is to introduce a private members bill in the Ontario soon.
This bill is intended to make Lyme disease a political issue requiring
a proper responsefrom every MPP representing those 3.5 million
Ontarians whose petition was uffed off. Because Lyme disease affects
more people than cancer and untreated costs possibly even more
than cancer, this is a scal issue of the rst order. Those of you who
worked to get MPP Monte Kwinters Health Freedom Bill passed into
law in 2000 know that health freedom is only health promoting and
freedom protective to the extent that we refuse to tolerate policies that
havent a leg to stand on and are a disgrace to public health. May is
international Lyme Disease Month. Is it not high time Ontario joins
the rest of the world?
I
NOTE: In the US, there are many websites providing information on
Lyme Disease. The best, most comprehensive, and truly reliable one
is the Lyme Disease Association run by Pat Smith. The unwary read-
er may wind up in similar-sounding websites and nd themselves
smack in the middle of the nonsense propagated by the IDSA
(Infectious Disease Society of America) which denies the existence of
chronic Lyme Disease for reasons that have to do with money and
politics and is not supported by the scientic evidence.
Ferrie, Helke, editor. Ending DenialThe Lyme Disease EpidemicA Canadian
Public Health Disaster, Kos April 2010. Call 519-927-1049 or order via
www.kospublishing.com Price: $20 plus shipping or $ 10 for orders of 5 or
more copies, plus shipping.
Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is one of the few international
medical journals available for free online. See especially the May 30, 2000, issue
for a comprehensive Lyme Disease research article and editorial.
Brody, Howard. HookedEthics, the Medical Profession and the Pharmaceutical
Industry, Rowman & Littleeld, 2007 (NOTE: the Attorney General of
Connecticut appointed the author, a professor of medical ethics, to chair the
independent team which will provide the new guidelines for the treatment of
Lyme Disease later this year.)
LAG (Lyme Action Group, Ontario) is the Ontario-based patient support group
for which I published Ending Denial and continues to work politically on behalf
of them.
Weintraub, Pamela. Cure UnknownInside the Lyme Epidemic, St. Martins
Press, updated edition 2010
CanLyme (the national Canadian Lyme patients organization;
President Jim Wilson) is the best place to get help and full information.
ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) for worldwide
research
The text of the National Lyme Disease Meeting March 89, 2006, published
January 22, 2008, is available through the website of the Public Health Agency
of Canada
For the 2008 documentary Under Our Skin go to www.underourskin.com
For reliable, internationally veried testing for Lyme disease www.igenixinc.com
or call 1-800-538-9820
Update Spring 2013
As of October 2012, Health Canada has acknowledged that
Canadian Lyme testing protocols are decient, acknowledging in the
Canadian Adverse Reaction Newsletter, vol. 22, issue 4, October 2012
(www.health.gc.ca/cam) that the currently mandated tests do not
cover the actual variety of Lyme-carrying ticks endemic in Canada,
thereby creating the false impression that there is no Lyme in
Canada. For details see Ending Denial, chapter 3.
In October Public Health Ontario announced a new test which is
available under OHIP as of October 22, 2012. This test is called Lyme
Disease IgG/IgM C6 peptide essay for Borrelia burgdorferi and it can
be ordered by your doctor by calling 416-235-6556; for further infor-
mation go to www.ohapp.ca/services/specimen-collectionguide.html.
As of late 2012, CanLyme has begun an education program for all
infectious disease experts in Canada to enable them to learn about
the Lyme Disease prevalence in Canada that has been denied in
Canada for so many years.
Two new books have appeared which are of great importance!
Dr. Burton A. Waisbren Sr., Treatment of Chronic Lyme Disease,
BioMed Publishing Group, 2011, is a presentation of 51 cases of
chronic Lyme disease treated by this infectious disease specialist who
was a founding member of the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of
America). As those Lyme patients know only too well, it is the IDSA
that has steadfastly refused to admit that chronic Lyme disease even
existswith terrible effects for those who have this condition. Dr.
Waisbren breaks ranks and tells it as it is. The treatment stories are
very helpful because they show how individualized this devastating
infection must be treated.
The second book is by Richard S. Ostfeld, Lyme DiseaseThe
Ecology of a Complex System, Oxford University Press, 2011. This amaz-
ing research story reads like a detective yarn. The author is a medical
ecologist and by looking at how this infectious disease adapts to its
various environments and exploits new potentials with great success,
he shows us how limited the purely medical approach actually is,
thereby harming patients, by not considering the true complexity of
this infectious process. A brilliant piece of research which ought to
inform doctors and get them out of the tendency to practice a narrow,
linear medicine.
Elizabeth May, leader of the Canadian federal Green Party, has
introduced a bill which if passed would make it possible to recognize,
diagnose, and treat Lyme disease in Canada properly. Check out her
efforts for Bill C-442.
On the legal front a very interesting article was published which
those with an interest or a battle in that arena may nd very useful:
Johanna Ferguson of the Boston University School of Law published
an article entitled Cure Unwanted? Exploring the Chronic Lyme
Disease Controversy and why Conflicts of Interest in Practice
Guidelines may be guiding us down the wrong Path, American
Journal of Law and Medicine, vol. 38, 2012.
It is also important to know that when you do an internet search
on Lyme disease, that there is a fundamental difference between an
organization called ALDFAmerican Lyme Disease Foundation and
the LDALyme Disease Association of America. The ALDF is a
mouthpiece of industry and the Chronic Lyme denying IDSA. The typ-
ical nonsense I found on there was, for example, the denial that Lyme
can be spread through sexual transmission, that ALS cannot be
caused by a Lyme infection, that Lyme cannot affect the brain and so
on. To say this outt is fact challenged and medically illiterate is the
most polite thing one can say. Most telling is the fact that these ques-
tions are answered on that site without sources! One is just supposed
to believe them and not bother with proof.
The correct information, meaning the international research on
Lyme and the facts on politics, treatment and variety of manifesta-
tions with actual proof/sources can so far only be found on the web-
site of the LDA.
SECTI ON 2
THE HUMAN LI FE SUPPORT SYSTEM
The Reach Treaty
December 2007*
The ancient Chinese believed that a cosmic force, the Will of Heaven,
controlled the rise and fall of their imperial dynasties. As soon as an
emperor failed to act in accord with the laws of nature, understood
as the Tao, the so-called Mandate of Heaven passed to a contender
who founded a new dynasty. The ancient Greeks understood this
mandate which required human obedience as coming up against
Anananke, the goddess Necessity.
This being written close to Christmas, some seasonal thoughts
are in order. Our own tradition also depicts, in the familiar scene of
the nativity crche, this ancient and universal insight that all earth-
ly power must serve life as shown in the newborn baby experienced
as divine. At the height of the Roman Empire, the Christmas story
tells us, God appeared in human form to teach humanity how to live
in harmony with divine intent. Today we rarely are conscious of the
symbolic images contained in the nativity scene which to people in
the Roman world would have been obvious: the ox resting near the
Christ childs crib represented the mighty powers of the past,
Mesopotamia and Egypt, as well as the Romans for all of whom the
bull was the symbol of royal power derived from the divine bulls in
their pantheons. The donkey stood for labor, obedience, and service
to commerce. The sheep represented the agricultural and farming
base as well as the obedience to the gods as they were the preferred
*
This article was originally published in a shorter version in Vitality Magazine under
the title The New Green Superpower.
sacricial animal in temple rituals; nally, the three kings coming
from the ends of the world provide the acknowledgment that a child,
the gift of eternal renewal transcends all temporal powers.
In my family we have a nativity set of gurines from Germany to
which I like to add a beautifully carved dragon, placed so as to peer
into the crib along with the other animals; the dragon represents the
rest of the world, as it is key to Asian philosophy. This is not to sug-
gest something like outdated ideas about alleged superiority of
Christianity, a notion to which I do not subscribe having been raised
in India, but it has to do instead with the primacy of the child as the
experience of eternal renewal that all cultures actually do share.
Whoever that mysterious historical Jesus was, he started a revolu-
tion which placed human rights above the states power, the individ-
uals conscience above obedience to collective norms, and made civil
disobedience into a virtue placing it at the centre of public debate.
Even two thousand years of often (mostly?) bloody Church history
and all our current copious Christmas kitsch and frenzied spending
have not extinguished this spirit of questioning temporal power in
reference to its performance as service to Life. The Mandate of Heaven
will forever place nature above human ambition; necessity cannot be
argued with, and all rulers and consumers must learn to serve life or
fail and become extinct.
Mark Schapiro, the director of the Center for Investigative
Reporting in San Francisco, published a book this year in which he
chronicles the fall of the American Empire and the passing of the
Mandate of Heaven to the European Union as a result not of
Americas nancially crippling and immoral wars, but rather because
the U.S. refuses to acknowledge that poisoning its own citizens for
prot, and demanding that the rest of the world buy its toxic prod-
ucts, is not a sound business strategy or future business plan.
This process began in 2000 when the E.U. made the so-called
Precautionary Principle central to its policies. The concept was rst
formulated in Germany in the early 1930s (in German:
Vorsorgeprinzip). It was eventually adopted in 1982 by the United
SECTION 2: The Human Life Support System 113
Nations, and the rst international treaty based on it was the
Montreal Protocol; it is also part of the 1992 Rio Declaration on
Environment and Development.
Its 2006 E.U. wording is, in part: Where there are reasonable
grounds for concern for the possibility of adverse effects, but scientif-
ic uncertainty persists, priority will be given to human health and
the environment, without having to wait until the reality and seri-
ousness of those adverse effects become fully apparent.
In 2002, the E.U. put this concept into practice and formally assert-
ed that sustainable and environmentally sound principles would
have to be as important for all industry as competitiveness and by
2004 drafted the worlds most comprehensive environmental laws,
most of which came into force this year. The U.S. and the rest of the
world have to follow, if they wish to trade with 480 million of the
wealthiest and best-educated consumers and producers in the
world. According to the CIAs World Factbook, Germany alone in
2005 surpassed the U.S. in exports, and the E.U. that year surpassed
the US in gross domestic productivity. The E.U. produces a third of the
global economy, almost equal to the U.S. and Japan combined.
European Union Brings The Hammer Down
In 2006, the E.U. informed the U.S. that electronics may no longer con-
tain the universally accepted toxic (and non-recyclable) ingredients
mercury, cadmium, lead, chromium and two types of re retardants.
A spokesperson for the industry commented that ever since we have
been in reactive hell. The director of the Electronic Industry Alliance
said: If you are not compliant your market is evaporating as we
speak. Electronics was just one item. Cars are no longer allowed to
use any toxicants either. A General Motors spokesperson said: We
have been hit by a tsunami!
Cosmetics, pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics in food-producing ani-
mals, animal feed containing slaughterhouse waste, various plasticiz-
ers and more, are all no longer acceptable for Europeans to import.
In fact anything and everything is outmore than 60,000 chemi-
calsif science has shown it to be, or suspects it to be, cancer-caus-
ing, hormone-disrupting, birth defect promoting, fertility compromis-
ing, toxic to aquatic life, or damaging to the environmentfrom
ozone-depleting to CO
2
-increasing. This move is especially amazing
in view of the fact that Europe, not the U.S., was the worlds largest
producer of toxic chemicals. It is their own industries they are clean-
ing up the most, and it is the European scientists who are working
overtime to nd safe substituteshaving found many already.
The Europeans have a new word for their attitude: glocalism
thinking locally and acting globally, the phrase antibiotic researcher
and environmentalist Renee Dubois coined. What was once the Cold
Wars greatly feared domino effect (then attributed to commu-
nism and socialism), has now become reality in the sphere of envi-
ronmental stewardship arising out of the socialism of the European
Green Party that started this whole process in the 1970s and kept up
the momentum of change. Now China, Japan, India, several South
American countries (even Mexico has found the courage to oppose
the U.S.) have either already adapted their environmental laws to the
E.U., or are in the process of doing so. No wonder, since the E.U. is
pouring hundreds of millions of Euros into helping these countries
clean up their own technologies.
Green Economics Globally
Brazil has taken the next logical step and identied the root cause of
the global trafcking in poison, namely advertising. In January 2007
the worlds fourth largest city, So Paulo, banned all outdoor adver-
tising as part of their new Clean City Law, and eliminated 15,000
billboards with the 70% approval of the citys population. (Imagine
the quantum leap in aesthetics if the QEW and the whole of Toronto
was free of those dreadful billboards!)
Worldwatch Institute researcher Erik Assadourian commented:
Its not simply greenhouse gases that cause climate change its our
consumer lifestyle that causes the greenhouse gases that cause cli-
mate change. Until we end consumerism and the rampant advertis-
ing that drives it, we will not solve the climate crisis. (I imagine the
Three Kings chose their gifts without prompting from television or
glossy magazines.)
A similar attitude was evident when the rst French court dealt
with farmers who had destroyed vast tracts of Monsantos test elds
growing genetically engineered corn: they were all acquitted on
grounds of self defense. The court accepted the reason provided by
the farmers who had all pleaded guilty. The asserted, correctly as it
turned out since, that there is no earthly way to prevent cross-pollina-
tion with the natural corn grown everywhere else which would ruin
their livelihood because GMO crops are not saleable in Europe.
North America Now A Hot Market For Toxic Products
Meanwhile, business being business, Asian countries have to get rid
of the stuff they already made and cant sell in the E.U. So, they sell
their toxicant-laced products to the U.S. and Canadawhere its still
quite legal. In the U.S. there are no laws against lead in lipstick, for
example. When the FDA was founded in 1938, cosmetics were
exempt from oversight thanks to intense lobbying from Revlon,
Unilever, Proctor & Gamble and Estee Lauder.
The underlying principle of this policy is to prevent harm when
harm is likely or proven as such by independent scientic research.
The E.U. also assumes that government regulation in matters of pub-
lic health and planetary survival is a good thing. Clearly understand-
ing the difference of this attitude to the U.S. way of doing business,
and horried by the obvious consequences to U.S. business, the inter-
national affairs officer of the American Electrical Association
exclaimed: The E.U. must get the science out of politics!
Dr. Shiv Chopra, our own Health Canada drug regulator and
inveterate activist against the above mentioned poisons and agricul-
tural practices, observed that in Europe they listen to their scientists,
while North American governments ght them.
The E.U. further demands that industry must meet the require-
ments of life-cycle analysis; a car, lipstick, computer, and a chewy
toy have to be safe at the time of sale as well as in the future when
they are discarded somewhere. Consequently, the E.U.s 2006 Accounts
Modernization Directive requires that all publicly traded European
rms must include future environmental liabilities in their account-
ing costs and potential future prots.
The American approach is to invoke liability law once the dam-
age is done; the courts set the brakes when it is too late, presumably
to teach others to behave themselves. By that time, society and the
environment have paid the price, the harm done is irreversible and
merely becomes a lesson. That this deterrent thinking doesnt work
is by now obvious: the very planet is sick while the multinationals are
obscenely rich and calculate the cost of potential litigation as part of
the cost of doing business.
The U.S. dispatched some 15,000 lobbyists to stop the European
parliament from voting in the various laws described so far. All efforts
failed; the laws passed. Schapiro quotes an E.U. diplomat: why
should we listen? If we are to listen to the U.S., how would we explain
to European citizens where the hundreds of chemicals in their bodies
come from? Schapiro sees these E.U.-led developments as a conver-
gence of green and economy which is not utopian; its more like
realpolitik for the twenty-rst century.
On the international scene, the Mandate of Heaven has with-
drawn from the U.S. in every instance where the great laws of natu-
ral justice were at stake. The rest of the world simply ignored deter-
mined U.S. opposition to the POPS treaty which successfully banned
the sale and production of the worlds most hazardous wastes. The
same happened with the Kyoto and the Land Mine treaties, the estab-
lishment of the International Criminal Court, and the Basel
Convention on Hazardous Wastes which outlaws dumping toxic
wastes on Third World countries. Schapiro comments that these are
all human rights initiatives that have gained international legitima-
cy without American participation. In each case, the E.U. was the
leader instead.
The Child As Superpower
The real superpower, however, is not the E.U., but Science. I would
suggest that she is Ananankes sister. The guiding star of political
power is no longer informed by missiles, Schapiro explains, but by a
policy that places the most vulnerablethe childat the centre of
business policy. Indeed, here we have a Christmas story for the 21st
century!
Science, being both a transcendent force as well as an enterprise
that knows no borders, has placed the U.S. in the ultimate of ironies:
since the late 1990s, most of the policy decisions made in the E.U. are
based on primarily American research. In fact, the leading U.S. insti-
tutions, whose databases are possibly the most comprehensive in the
world, often simply bypassed their own regulatory agencies, knowing
them to be hopeless, and sent their reports directly to the European
Commissionwho wasted no time in using them to pass appropriate
laws. (This appears to have so enraged those who cannot accept that
the Mandate of Heaven is passing from them, that they have started
to close the immense network of the Environmental Protection
Agencys scientic libraries and destroy much of its contents. The
Union of Concerned Scientists is hoping to stop this vandalism (go to
www.ucsusa.org).
MeantimeBack In Canada
In the meantime, a lot remains to be done. Here in Canada we still
have cancer-causing hormones and antibiotics in our food-producing
animals. Slaughterhouse waste is still being fed to herbivores exposing
us to the risk of Mad Cow Disease. Our food is contaminated with pes-
ticides and genetically engineered substances. Sure, we cant sell any
of this to Europe, but North America will become a toxic island if we
do not join in the life-afrming spirit of disobedience that serves the
Divine Child.
When Dr. Shiv Chopra recently spoke at the Whole Life Expo he
got a standing ovation for his proposal to exercise our natural right
to stop our government from forcing us to eat contaminated food for
corporate prot. A nationwide action has in fact begun. A petition is
to be put before parliament by MP Paul Dewar which basically
demands that we accept the E.U. principles.
I
M. Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and Whats at
Stake for American Power, Chelsea Green, 2007
M. Simon, Appetite For Prot: How the Food Industry Undermines our Health
and How to Fight Back, Nation Books, 2006
C. White, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics,
Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work, PolitPoint Press, 2007
If you would like to know how toxic your bathroom, laundry and
kitchen actually are, and what those roughly 100 chemicals do that
assail you daily through personal care products, go to the E.U.s web-
site which tells you what Europeans may not be exposed to and
why: http://europa.eu.int/comm./health/ph_risk/committees/
sccp/sccp_opinions_en.htm and to www.cosmeticdatabase.com/
research/whythismatters.php.
Update Spring 2013
This year, 2013, the big deadline has to be met by companies in North
America and everywhere else as well, if countries want to trade with
the European Union. As explained on a website helping companies to
comply, http://www.environmental-expert.com, After the first
REACH registration deadline in 2010, European industry now has to
prepare for the second registration deadline of the 31st of May 2013.
This deadline is for the registration of all phase-in substances manu-
factured or imported in the EU above 100 tonnes per year. The lessons
learned in 2010 tell us that all the companies involved in this phase
have to be prepared and start work now to make sure that they have
time to fulll all the obligations required for the registration. To
remind everyone of this, ECHA is promoting its REACH 2013Act
Now! campaign on its website. Here registrants will nd all the infor-
mation needed as well as the services and tools that the Agency pro-
vides to help companies to comply the REACH registration require-
ments.
Biotech Food Fights and the Future of Food*
2008
Facts are stubborn things.
John Adams, First US President,
author of the US Constitution
These days, most of us feel a sense of dread and embarrassment when
we nd out, from time to time, what our government has done on the
international stage. Being a Canadian is a bit like being the parent of
a teenager who is into drugs. When the telephone rings you hope and
pray its not the police again. Well, the feds did it again, and here is
where and how. The why is as mysterious as the inner workings of the
minds of ones juvenile delinquent kid.
Most people know about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change; its reports are not something purely academic, but attention
must be paid to them by the entire family of nations. Discussion,
debate, dissenting views, endorsements are all part of the process
these reports set in motionbut you cant ignore the process.
There is a parallel organization, also convened by the United
Nations, and it is devoted to agriculture: the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology Development
(IAASTD). The purpose of its now completed four-year $ 10 million
project is to do for hunger and poverty what the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is mandated to do for global warming.
From April 7 to 12, 2008, representatives of the governments of 63
countries gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, to debate the
future of agriculture on the basis of IAASTDs rst report; it is the work
of hundreds of scientist. They were chosen by those 63 governments
*
This is a condensation of three articles published in Vitality Magazine August 2008,
August 2009 and August 2011.
involved. At this meeting in April, 60 countries endorsed the report
only four refused to do so, and in fact three walked out of the meeting.
Those three countries were the US, Australiaand Canada. The
UK refused to sign.
Not only did they refuse to accept their own scientist report, they
also ignored the demand of their own people. In Canada, every poll
in the last few years has shown increasing dislike of genetically
altered foods, standing now at 97%. Nevertheless, Canada walked out
of the IAASTD summit alleging their nal report was unbalanced
and one-sided, even though these countries had sent only those sci-
entists in whom they themselves had placed perfect trust. Ah!
Integrity is a treacherous quality! Governments can pick scientists,
but they cant (always) make them lie. Faced with the evidence of
world agriculture, they marched to the drummer of empirical science
instead of the din of government policy.
The report concluded that the ecological footprint of industrial
agriculture is already too large to be ignored. Gene Ethics, observed
on June 5, 2008, that this report also makes it clear that the agricul-
ture of the future is one that works with nature and the peoplenot
against them. The IAASTD report specically points out that genet-
ically engineered crops are highly controversial and will not play a
substantial role in addressing the key problems of climate change,
biodiversity loss, hunger, and poverty. Its chair, Professor Robert
Watson of the World Bank was asked if genetically modied crops
could solve world hunger. He replied: The simple answer is no.
From now on, wrote Gene Ethics, the conclusions of the IAASTD
report will be a key reference point for the future of agriculture and
impact UN and World Bank projects around the world. Not only does
this report nix genetically engineered crops, it also outlines that the
trend must quickly move from large corporate-controlled agriculture
to the only possible sustainable techniques of small, regional farming
methods to avid a world food crisis. The IAASTD report explicitly rec-
ommends that governments should recognize consumer preference
with respect to GE crops, protect farmers seed rights, and ensure that
no cross contamination takes place.
A month earlier, Monsanto suffered a landmark defeat in the
courts when it had to agree on March 19, 2008, to pay all the clean-
up costs of the Roundup ready canola that contaminated Percy
Schmeisers elds. This sets an important precedent because it is now
legally established that patented plants are potential trespassers,
which makes them contaminants to be treated as genetic pollutants.
This ensures that all those farmers currently threatened by
Monsantos legal actions for having GE seeds drift into their non-GE
elds, will have their own, natural, crops protected.
Back in the 1990s, without his knowledge, Schmeisers elds had
been contaminated with Monsantos GE canola for which Monsanto
sued him on the grounds of patent infringement. Back in 2004, our
Supreme Court judges ordered the Canadian government to amend
patent laws to reect this new technological realitywhich has so far
not happened.
Schmeiser won the 2007 alternate Nobel, Swedens Right
Livelihood Award, for having given the world a wake-up call about
the dangers to farmers and biodiversity everywhere from the growing
dominance and market aggression of companies engaged in the
genetic engineering of food crops.
The myth the GE industry so desperately tried to palm off as real-
ity has totally bitten the dust on both claims, namely that these foods
are good for us and just as good as natures products. Interestingly,
the rst health disaster maliciously attributed to natural health prod-
ucts turned out to be a GE-caused tragedy. Jeffery Smith, who recent-
ly published a magisterial survey of all the known science to date on
the health effects of GE foods, rst uncovered the true story involving
tryptophan.
In its natural form, tryptophan is an essential amino acid found
in milk, turkey meat and other foods. Being an essential amino
acid means that it is an absolute requirement for life, and as such it
interacts with a host of targets within an organism. Messing with an
amino acid means messing with everything.
Smith tells the story of how in the late 1980s a lot of people suf-
fered sudden and extreme nerve pain, and their legs and arms lled
with uid; they also had trouble breathing. The Mayo Clinic discov-
ered that these had taken this supplement. About 100 people died
and thousands became seriously ill and the symptoms were given the
name eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS). The Journal of the
American Medical Association reported on July 11, 1990, that all these
victims had in common the fact that they had taken GE-contaminat-
ed tryptophan pills traced to one manufacturer who had used genet-
ically engineered bacteria: genes had been inserted into these bacte-
ria to produce higher concentrations of this amino acid. When Science
reported these ndings as well, the FDA blasted the authors for
causing an adverse impact on the industry.
The scientists presented in Smiths book document how GMOs do
harm, such as by promoting sterility, increasing infant mortality, pro-
voking serious allergies, setting in motion cascades that result in
organ damage, increasing vulnerability to childhood diseases, chal-
lenging and breaking down immune responses, harming the nervous
system andmost importantlythat these foods do not nourish.
Smith tells an interesting story about Health Canadas concern for
public health in the age of GMOs: Tracking down the impact of GM
foods is even more difcult in North America where these foods are
not labeled [no control groupas the GE industry hoped to escape liabili-
ty]. Regulators at Health Canada announced in 2002 that they would
monitor Canadians for health problems from eating GM foods. A
spokesperson said, I think its just prudent and what the public
expects But according to the CBC TV news on Current Affairs,
September 25, 2006, Health Canada abandoned that research less
than a year later saying that it was too difcult to put an effective sur-
veillance system in place.
Science is moving so rapidly in dispelling GE myths, I have a hard
time keeping up with the rapidity of results published by universities
focusing on health effects and comparing GE crops with organic and
regular crops: GE corn has been shown to cause kidney damage and
measurable liver toxicity in animal studies; GM potatoes show cancer
links; Roundup-ready soy is known to cross the placenta and damage
human fetuses; agricultural pests like the bollworm and bacteria
harmful to humans have been shown to develop resistance to both
pesticides and antibiotics making them into super-pests, so-to-speak;
and 2,500 pregnant women were studied showing that the babies of
those who ate dairy organic foods were signicantly less likely to
develop allergies later (ScienceDaily Feb.8, 2008; Third World
Resurgence, No. 176, April 2005; The Independent, UK, Feb 17,
2007; Newstarget April 10, 2007; Daily Mail, UK, Nov. 10, 2007).
Organic farms have now been shown in long-term studies to be
just as productive, and often more so, as conventional pesticide-con-
taminated farming, and while growing crops organically, these even
clean up the groundwater in the process (Science Daily July 14, 2005;
July 24, 2007; July 20, 2007; March 26, 2008; May 8, 2008.)
In May 2007, German researchers conrmed earlier observations
showing that genetically altered crops do not maintain their genetic
integrity, as claimed by those who hold the patents. In fact, such
altered plants seem to have little if any genetic integrity because the
are not held together, as it were, by millions of years of evolutionary
reinforcement. In fact, those foreign genes that reside in crops in
which they did not evolve have now been shown to jump the species
barrier. The Observer in the UK reported on May 28 the ndings of
geneticist Hans Heinrich Kaatz of Jena University which showed that
the herbicide-resistant genes [inserted into] rapeseed transferred
across to the bacteria and yeast organisms inside the intestines of
young bees. This nding, if supported by further and already ongo-
ing research, would totally shatter the myth substantially equiva-
lent. Naturally evolved plants dont pass their genetic material on to
other organisms; the whole point of DNA is to stay put and take care
of its own context only. Genes taken out of the context within which
they evolved appear to become loose canons in nature.
A parallel nding has also been made with regard to cloning ani-
mals. The propaganda would have us believe that cloning propa-
gates the nest and the best, a sort of eugenics program for food pro-
ducing farm animalsthe best steak replicated forever and ever.
However, that is not how those see it who actually are familiar with
the processes involved. One of the leading cloning scientists in the
world, Rudolph Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
said recently: You cannot make normal clones. The ones that sur-
vive will just be less abnormal than the ones that die early. There
has been no progressnonein the last six years in making cloning
more safe.
The UK Alliance for Natural Health won three court cases in the
EU (2005), the International Court of Justice (2006) and the British
High Court (2007) on behalf of natural medicine and the GMO issues
versus Codex regulation. In an interview on June 24, 2008, its chair,
Dr. Robert Verkerk, explained that the Irish No vote against the EU on
June 12 was primarily due to issues of natural health products and
the desire to have foods remain uncontaminated by genetically engi-
neered varieties. The latter issue motivates the current injunction
against the ratication of the EU Constitution led in the British High
Court; one of its justices even went public and told the Prime Minister
to stop all ratication work until the case has been heard (Times, June
21, 2008).
The populations of the UK, France, Denmark and the Netherlands
are demanding a national referendum on the EU question primarily
because they dont want GMOs allowed in Europe (EU-Referendum.org,
June 5, 2008). Here in Canada, we still have two bills awaiting our
joint demand for passage: C-510 which would make GE crops illegal
and ban pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and rendered slaughter-
house waste from food production; and C-448 which would ban ter-
minator technology as well.
Who would have thought that food and medicine would become
the worlds central concerns! But what else could possibly be more
important?
I
www.agassessment.org for the documents on IAASTD
www.anhcampaign.org for the European Alliance for Natural Health defending EU
countries rights on natural health and organic farming issues
www.i-sis.org.uk for the research on GMOs and organic agriculture published by
the Institute of Science in Society in the UK
www.organicauthority.com for worldwide news updates
C. Holdrege & S. Talbott. Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic
Engineering. University of Kentucky, 2008
M. Pollan. In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto. Penguin, 2008
J. M. Smith. Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically
Engineered Foods. Yes! 2007
T. Traavik & L. Ching eds. Biosafety First: Holistic Approaches to Risk and
Uncertainty in Genetic Engineering. Tapir, 2008
P. Weirich, ed. Labeling Genetically Modied Food: The Philosophical and Legal
Debate. Oxford, 2008
R. Ronald & R. Adamchak. Tomorrows Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and
the Future of Food. Oxford, 2008
2009
Theres a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in.
From Anthem by Leonard Cohen
In May, the food labeling committee of the international food stan-
dards authority (Codex) had its annual meetingthis time in
Calgary. Its new chair is Health Canadas Paul Mayers, well-known
for his unconditional support of genetically modied foods. At the
meeting, he tried is bestunsuccessfullyto ensure that genetically
modied (GM) foods would not be labeled as such. The European
Union and others kicked up a big fuss and the matter is, once again,
postponed to next years meeting.
When Codex was founded in 1963, genetic engineering was not
even on the radar; today, it is a living science nightmare that 97% of
Canadians would like to awake from. In direct contradiction to well
documented public rejection of GM foods in Canada, our government
supported representatives of those countries present at the Codex
meeting which are producers of GMO foods, namely the USA,
Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia. The citizens of these coun-
tries are also opposed to GM foods, but their governments dont listen
to them either. According to the US National Health Federations
lawyer Scott Tipps, who represented anti-GMO groups at the Calgary
Codex meeting, these GM-pushing countries have decided that the
consumer is too stupid to understand [that GM foods are good for us
and] and wished to see GM-food labeling disappear into a black hole.
However, international scientic consensus supports the rights of
the consumer to have access to clean, unadulterated food. Last year,
the 63-nation committee on International Assessment of Agricultural
Science and Technology Development (IAASTD) stated in their nal
unanimous report that the agriculture of the future is one that works
with nature and the peoplenot against them and that genetical-
ly engineered crops will not play a substantial role in addressing the
key problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, hunger, and pover-
ty. Indeed, the report urged governments to recognize consumer
preference with respect to GM foods, protect farmers seed rights, and
ensure that no cross contamination takes place. Included in this
international committee were enlightened scientists from those same
countries ghting labeling in Calgary. (Vitality, July 2008)
Eleven European countries banned GM crops in 2008. Interestingly,
Monsantos top executives saw the writing on the wall a year earlier
and started selling off their own (once highly prized) shares in their
company, as reported by Forbes Insider Trading on July 17, 2007. That
same month, the U.S. Patent Ofce reversed some of Monsantos key
patents on which their genetic engineering products depend, nding
that Monsanto did not actually have the intellectual property rights
to them (Vitality October 2007). Perhaps encouraged by this develop-
ment, 26 leading biotech scientists formally declared, also in 2008,
that the patent system has effectively caused science to be monopo-
lized by corporations and thus actively prevents scientists from working for
the public interest. (Andrew Pollack, New York Times February 20, 2009)
Back in 1999, 136 scientists from all over the world had already
called for a moratorium on GM crops and a total ban on patents for
crops. Since patents are only useful if they hold the promise of future
prots, dealing in GM crops may be even worse these days than deal-
ing in the automotive industry; the Genetic Engineering News reported
on September 1, 2008, that there just isnt any money for such inher-
ently risky business, and that the greatest competition to biotech
now comes from the emerging clean energy sector.
And food technology experts like John Floros observe that funding
for biotech has been drastically reduced over the past 15 years: You
can see the zero he lamented, when addressing a biotech conference
in early June. He blames the Slow Food and organic lobby [which
caused] the perception that food technology is about messing with
foodand that threatens to undermine food safety efforts, which for
him means biotechnology. With apologies to Dr. Floros, I was cheering.
Also heartening was the news that the U.S. Department of
Agriculture suggested a moratorium on cloned beef to achieve an
acceptance process given the emotional nature of this issue. More
than 50% of Americans dont want cloned meat in any form anywhere.
When prot becomes synonymous with control, reliance on secre-
cy and lies becomes the order of the day. Jeffrey Smiths outstanding
books on biotech foods take the reader through a carefully document-
ed maze of deception and criminal disregard for health and ecology
that makes your head spin. The rst time I read his Seeds of Deception
I literally got a headache. What astounded me was the long list of
documented cases of all those animals refusing to eat GM foods:
geese, hogs, squirrels, elk, deer, raccoons, mice, rats and cowswhich
crashed through fences in order to get at non-GM food in the adjoin-
ing elds. In every case, when forced to eat GM foods, they became
sick, sometimes after one feeding, or died. The most recent, 2007
research shows that Monsantos biotech corn is toxic to the liver and
the kidneys of animals tested.
We humans can avoid genetically modied foods, but only with
great difculty. According to the Centre of Food Safety, about 60% of
all processed foods have GM content.
The scientists who dared to report their truthful research results
about GM foods were silenced one way or another (see Dr. Chopras
book on our governments tactics), and their research was kept from
the public by a specially appointed guardian, Michael Taylor, who
also happens to be the cousin of former U.S. Vice President Al Gores
wife. President Clinton made Taylor the Deputy Commissioner for
Policy in 2000, a new ofce he created to control biotech information
at both the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Once Taylor
had sanitized all available science, he was rewarded with the Vice-
Presidency of Monsanto. (This information is now available, and
shows this technology to be unt for human and animal consump-
tion and a potential ecological disaster.)
As for the U.S. taxpayer, the losses in international trade for just
19992001 alone amounted to $12 billionand are continuing
unabated. Biotechnology is historys most spectacular economic fail-
ure. In Canada, the entire canola export went down the drain with
annual nancial losses of hundreds of millions, for the simple reason
that GM canola oil is known to cause health problems ranging from
hypertension to cancer. Its rapeseed oil content was found to be car-
cinogenic in China when cooks breathed it in while stir-frying their
food (Wall Street Journal June 7, 1995).
Today, the U.S. government has to subsidize farmers up to $5 bil-
lion annually to cover GM-related crop failures and damage. This
may become as expensive as their wars, because long predicted
superweeds have emerged in the Sun Belt states, where pigweed has
mutated into chemical invincibility through constant applications of
Roundup (glyphosate), devastating cotton and soybean crops. In
2008, about 45% of all those vast fields had to be hand weeded.
(www.naturalnews.com)
Last year, 80% of South Africas GM corn harvest failed:
82,000 hectares grew ne-looking corn, but with no kernels at all.
Actually, this really is all about control, not health or global food
security. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, American diplomat Paul
Bremer issued a series of directives to serve as building blocks for the
new Iraq. Among them was Order 81, which compelled Iraqi farm-
ers to abandon their 10,000 years of agricultural history and instead
use Monsantos seed and plant products if they wanted to do business
with the U.S. The concern is that Iraqi farmers will have the same fate
as those in India, where some 1,500 farmers committed suicide
because their crops failed year after year and their biotech contracts
could not be fullled. (www.INEAS.org, www.alternet.org)
Prince Charles, ignoring the pressure to shut up exerted by Prime
Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, called for an end to biotech
farming, quoting Mahatma Gandhis warning against commerce
without morality and science without humanity. He was referring
to the suicides among Indian farmers, terminator technology, and
recent research conducted by Syngenta which used children for GM
food trialssponsored by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Prince also called attention to the lie that biotechnology is
necessary to feed the world. In fact, according to organizations study-
ing hunger and food shortages, the world produces annually about
twice as much food as requiredthrough non-biotech farming.
Organic methods consistently outperform conventional and biotech,
methods: Brazil and Ethiopia increased their yields by 250% when
they switched to organic methods. (Independent, October 5, 2008;
Daily Mail, February 17, 2009)
What will happen when antibiotic resistance spreads, as it
inevitably will even more than it has already, because animal genes
coding for this resistance are used in some biotech foods?
Consumption of such foods can cause horizontal gene transfer to con-
sumers because digestion is not as simple as biotech would like it to
be. Back in 1992, when biotechnology began, the FDA warned about this
serious health hazard. Human extinction is another interesting side
effect to contemplate: the Austrian government released research results
in November last year conrming that GM crops threaten human fertil-
ity in both sexes. As a result, Austria banned all biotech foods.
In May of this year, the American Academy of Environmental
Medicine formally warned against GMO consumption in any form;
their member physicians advise patients to avoid such foods totally,
especially GM soy products (download their report from
mailto:newsletter@responsibletechnology.org newsletter@responsi-
bletechnology.org, May 20, 2009).
Eventually, inherent inconsistencies cause cracks in the edice and
let in some light. Back in 1999, when it looked like GM foods were
going to take the world by storm, the cafeteria in Monsantos U.K.
headquarters at High Wycombe posted a policy notice stating that
in response to concerns raised by our customers we have decided
to remove, as far as possible, genetically modied soy and maize from
all food products served [here] to ensure that you, the customer, can
feel condent in the food we serve.
The colossal stupidity on which biotech is based truly boggles the
mind: it took some four billion years for all of lifes genes to evolve in
an intricate dance with changing environments, conjuring up a com-
plexity of interdependence that is characterized by myriad interac-
tions of absolute specicity. Then, along come these yahoos and mix
and match genes to serve some nut bar dream of wealth and world
domination, developed from the economical models fantasizing
about limitless growtha pipe-dream that came up during a mere
nano-second in lifes evolutionary process. What are these guys
smoking?
If you want a quick, thumbnail sketch of what they are thinking
(such as it is), take a look at one of their colouring books for children
(www.whybiotech.com).
Problems within the conventional Food Industry
Biotech food production is just part of the problem. Go see the
newly released documentary, Food Inc. In it, director Robert Kenner
pulls back the curtain on the industrial food system in the United
States and connects the dots between factory farming and E. coli
outbreaks, government subsidies and the diabetes epidemiceven
slaughterhouses and illegal immigration [and nds that] it is
fundamentally unsustainable and as unrealistic as our credit
system. But you know what? Its going to crack! (Philadelphia Daily
News, June 15, 2009).
A University of Michigan study, reported in February 2009, showed
a clear association between risk of stroke and the number of fast-
food restaurants in the neighborhood. Neighborhoods with the
lowest number of such restaurants had the least number of
strokes. The more processed a food, the more biotech content.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently conrmed that all
fresh cut, ready to eat vegetables are treated with chlorine. And
neurotoxic and carcinogenic MSG is routinely sprayed on conven-
tional fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and seeds, even on what
goes into baby food (www.rense.com, April 20, 2009).
A new book Squeezed: What You Dont Know About Orange Juice by
Alissa Hamilton is a real stomach churnerafter reading this book
I decided on fresh-squeezed organic oranges for me only, forever.
About 70% of conventionally raised broiler chickens are loaded
with antibiotics (even those which Tyson Foods claims are raised
without antibioticsthey inject the eggs). Both chickens and pigs
have plenty of arsenic in their conventional feeds (www.nocca-
wood.ca and www.pressandguide.com).
Furthermore, the soy protein used in some natural foods and
baby formula is often saturated with a toxic solvent called hexa-
ne (www.naturalnews.com May 20, 2009).
Irradiated cat food proved a killer for cats; in the U.K. cat food may
not be irradiated anymore. Farmed sh not only have less essen-
tial fatty acid content than wild ones, but are now the victims of a
new bacterium which threatens to wipe out the sheries, and also
may cause Mad Cow disease. Here come the Mad Fish (Norwegian
School of Veterinary Science, November 21, 2008.)
Now, what really scares me is the recent discovery, described by
neonatologist Dr. Paul Winchester, that the health problems
caused by exposure to pesticides can be transferred to the baby via
sperm or eggs: in other words the toxin-induced disease state can
be passed on to the next generation (mailto:ahhaq@aeha-que-
bec.caahhaq@aeha-quebec.ca, April 12, 2009).
Towards positive Solutions
I am most grateful to the McGuinty government for passing the
province-wide ban on use and sale of some 250 pesticides and
some 80 additional ingredients for lawn and garden use. This is
especially impressive when considering that Dow Chemicals plan
to sue Canada over Quebecs earlier ban under NAFTA Chapter 11
did not deter Ontario from passing this legislation. We should all
support the federal bill C-363 (NDPPat Martin, Winnipeg) to
have this ban throughout Canada.
McDonalds, the largest potato buyer in North America, will now
have a positive impact on all potato farming because sharehold-
ers, in collaboration with Investor Environmental Health Network,
demanded a substantial reduction in pesticide use on potatoes
destined to feed McDonalds billions of customers.
Research in the 2002 Jeffrey Smith reports showed that food mole-
cules act like hormones and neurotransmitters. Young rats fed
biotech food became like ADHD kids. The European Journal of
Clinical Nutrition (December 5, 2007) reported that junk food was
indeed a major cause of well-known behaviour problems and
stopping its availability resulted in the kids behaviour returning
to normal. This, and a study on food coloring in the Lancet that
same year, prompted Australias largest supermarket chain (Aldi)
to remove food coloring and preservatives like benzoate, propi-
onates and synthetic antioxidants from packaged foods.
In September last year, California passed a law that protects farm-
ers from biotech companies who now are responsible for genetic
contamination from biotech eld crops.
Meanwhile, organic manure has been proven to be superior to
synthetics, and Dr. Shiv Chopra reported that bovine growth hor-
mone has been stopped in the US as well. And thank youGuelph
Universitys organic agriculture program continues to thrive.
Happily, on June 17, Canada agreed to adopt the U.S. organic
farming and food standards; occasionally our friends down south
force us into something good.
When Michelle Obama scared the biotech honchos with her
organic garden at the White House, she was signaling a return to
the great tradition of good sense as demonstrated by Auburn
University, Alabama, which has maintained traditional farming
plots for 110 years. They still outperform modern methods in
every way (Agronomy Journal, 2008; 100 (5):1493ff). We can do the
same.
I
Smith, Jeffrey M., Genetic Roulette, Yes! Books 2007. Also: GMO Trilogy
Unnatural Selection, Hidden Dangers in Kids Meals, Youre eating WHAT? DVD.
For research showing the nutritional content of conventional food compared to
organic, google International Academy of Nutrition and Preventive Medicine,
Biodynamics, the November 2008 issue of the CCPA Monitor, and
http://www.organic_center.org
www.soilandhealth.org
www.i-sis.dircon.co-uk
www.responsibletechnology.org
www.orthomolecularhealth.com
www.helpyourselfcommunity.org
www.veriedeggs.com check to buy omega-3 containing eggs from humane-
ly treated animals
www.ewg.org download free guide to pesticide-free produce
www.stjohnsbakery.com in Toronto, for Red Fife our and healthy breads
2011
the question we face is whether this [GMO]
cornucopia presents a picture of health and lawful bounty,
or instead the hellish image of nature betrayed.
C. Holdrege & S. Talbott, 2008
Ever since biotechnology introduced genetically modied foods in the
mid-1990s, biotech scientists have insisted that these foods are sub-
stantially equivalent to what weve eaten since the dawn of time. Yet
for the past 15 years, roughly 90% of people around the world have
demanded that GMO foods be clearly labeled, so they can be avoided.
And how do our regulators respond? At the latest round of CODEX
labeling debates in Quebec City in March, the U.S. FDA soothingly
suggested that consumers do not need GMO labeling, as it would
only confuse them, and they would then make the incorrect food
choices. The last time we heard this paternalistic BS was at Senate
hearings a decade ago from Canadas then Deputy Minister of
Health, David Dodge. He opined that labeling milk and beef products
as containing recombinant bovine growth hormone would alarm the
public unnecessarily because ordinary Canadians dont understand
the underlying safe science.
However, that 90% of anti-GMO humanity includes a lot of scien-
tists who do understand just how toxic these products are to people
and the worlds ecosystem. Theres even a new documentary, The
Idiot Cycle, which focuses on cancer caused by GMO-focused agricul-
tural practices (www.theidiotcycle.com).
When change moves a contentious issue out of deadlock, it tends
to do so in surprising ways; and so it was at the CODEX labeling
meeting this year, too. The governments of Asia, Africa, and South
America do not consider the nesimposed by the World Trade
Organization for refusing to import GM cropsas small change (as
the EU countries do, which just refuse and pay up). So, ingeniously,
those countries bypassed the arguments about safety, food security,
the human right to choose what goes into our mouths, and the pro-
tection of indigenous crop diversity. As the National Health
Federations lawyer Scot Tips reported, these countries instead
demanded protection from being ned for food import decisions aris-
ing from local sovereignty. This could not be denied, as national
autonomy is part of CODEXs constitution. Finally the labeling issue
has gained some traction.
Carl B. Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, opined on July 23, 1998 in the New York Times:
Archaeologists have documented twelve thousand years of agricul-
ture throughout which farmers have genetically altered crops by
selecting certain seeds from one harvest and using them to plant the
next, a process that has led to enormous changes in the crops we
grow and the food we eat. It is only in the past thirty years that we
have become able to do it through biotechnology at higher levels of
predictability, precision, and safety. Now, I happen to have a mas-
ters degree in prehistoric archaeology and know for a fact that this is
nonsense. Nothing remotely resembling modern biotechnology hap-
pened in the Neolithic period; as for the precision and safety of
GMO production, any undergraduate student of genetics would be
bafed by that insupportable assertion.
Here are some recent developments from around the world that
bring into focus the deadly impact of genetically modied organisms
on human health:
In June 2011, a report was published on the largest ever analysis
of the worlds prehistoric human remainsfrom the dawn of agricul-
ture as compared to skeletal material prior to this shift. In the report,
archaeologists at Emory University describe how peoples health
appears to have dramatically declined when they shifted from hunt-
ing and gathering to relying on agriculture. The global bag of bones
tells a story of nutritional deciencies and stress resulting from
increasing reliance on just a few foods (i.e. prehistoric monoculture)
and the rapid evolution of human diseases arising from animal
domestication. Over the next several thousand years, people began to
learn more about nutrition through painful and deadly trial and
error; it is probably only now that we really know what healthy nutri-
tion meansand it cannot include GMOs. Modern medicine conrms
for today what archaeologists know about the past: University of
Missouris developmental biologist, Fred vom Saal, goes so far as to
suggest that all modern human diseases are being caused by environ-
mental toxins of our own making.
Former Health Canada scientist, Dr. Shiv Chopra, wrote in the
April 28 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal: Each year
approximately 11 million Canadians suffer from food-borne disease
(FBD). But there is more to FBD than food-borne infections. The
Canadian food supply is presently the most toxic on earth, which is
due to the indiscriminate use of hormones, antibiotics and slaughter-
house waste, along with pesticides and pesticide-dependent GMOs in
food production. Sadly, the medical community is paying no atten-
tion to these causes of FBD [which] increase the incidence of cancer,
diabetes, hormone disruption, neurological, immunological and
other metabolic disorders.
Among the rapidly increasing number of biotech disasters are the
huge cloning experiments in New Zealand which had to be aban-
doned because 90% of the animals endured unnecessary suffering
and died.
Mainstream research has found that GMO foods cause serious
problems for human kidneys and the liver; anything that upsets the
liver must be assumed to be exceedingly toxic. A thorough analysis of
the exact biological pathways now known to be disrupted or poisoned
by GM foods can be found in an excellent article by Sharry Edwards of
the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology; it goes a long way towards
explaining the huge increase in food allergies. The precision with
which health effects can now be demonstrated, stemming from GMOs
and their prerequisite pesticides, is so great that the exact pathways
by which pesticides cause Parkinsons are now understood.
A new pathogen, previously unknown to science, visible with an
electron microscope, and as yet unnamed, has been discovered by
Perdue University researchers in all crops engineered to be Roundup
Ready; these scientists state that this discovery should be treated as a
world-wide emergency because the pathogen causes many plant
and animal diseases.
Canadian research recently showed that 93% of all fetuses and
their mothers tested were found to be contaminated with toxins asso-
ciated with GM foods. We now also have proof that GM soy products
cause pre-cancerous changes to the ovaries and uterus of animals
that consume them.
One of the most harmful side effects of GM agricultural practices
is the need for antibiotics to treat sick animals; indeed, 80% of all
antibiotics manufactured goes to livestock. This has brought about
the rampant antibiotic resistance in life-threatening bacteria so that
the use of drugs of last resort has increased by 79% between 2005
and 2009. Bacteria transfer such resistance even horizontally to one
another as well as via the intestines of food-producing animals.
GMO-related health problems affect the plants themselves and the
soil in which they are expected to grow. As reported by Global Research
this May, the rice crop contamination from Bayer CropScience GM
varieties in 2006 caused a huge increase in the use of Roundup (about
400 million additional pounds since GM crops began). Now, serious-
ly reduced crop yields and deformed rice plants are becoming wide-
spread. Not surprisingly, this violent type of agriculture never takes
the soil itself into account, which becomes impacted due to the heavy
machinery required for large-scale corporate agriculture. The farming
methods as well as the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides kill the
necessary organisms in the soilminute creatures on which crop
growth depends. American and Dutch scientists are pointing out that
it takes a community of soil microbes to protect plants from disease.
The upshot of this mad-science-inspired dirty agribusiness is that
50% of all children in the U.S. now have chronic diseases and 21%
suffer from developmental disorders. The estimated cost of these
human-made diseases and malnutrition is estimated at $76.6 billion
annually. Now governments around the world are starting to
acknowledge that their countries children are adversely affected by
these deadly agricultural practices. In one example, Indias Supreme
Court imposed a temporary ban on the pesticide endosulfan in May,
and urged the government to join the international campaign to stop
its production and use completely. The judges stated that when some-
thing affects the right to life, the fundamental right to business has
to take the back seat because the right to life is higher than all
laws and rights.
Since such enormous prots are at stake for those who wish to con-
trol the worlds food supply through transnational corporations, they
are not likely to give up anytime soon. Supported by the Bill Gates
Foundation, they promise medicines engineered into plants, and are
ready to bring the rst GM foods to market that contain human
genesif we let them. A really appetizing offer comes from Japan
where they have developed edible meat from human excrement. Bon
apptit! The only new offering that I nd worthy of consideration
involves test-tube burgers, the development of which would stop the
horrendous suffering of all those millions of farm animals slaugh-
tered to sustain the current burger industry. I recommend for contem-
plation the Test-tube Burgers article published in the May 23 The New
Yorker.
A recent United Nations report showed that eco-farming increased
average crop yields by about 80% in 57 developing countries in the
last decade; in many areas in Africa crop yields doubled at 3 to 10
years, depending on the region. The report states: Todays scientic
evidence demonstrates that agro ecological methods outperform the
use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hun-
gry liveespecially in unfavorable environments. In China especial-
ly, chemical-free pest management, achieved through intercropping
different rice varieties, drastically cut rice losses. And in California,
organic strawberry production, which is difcult to manage, took off
gloriously.
In the U.S., the state of Maine was the rst to assert its right to food
sovereignty, for which it was vigorously attacked, but was able to
prove that food sovereignty is a constitutional guarantee. In
California, people forced the powers-that-be to label GM sh, and
now the state is poised to ban GM salmon outright. The E.U. also
refuses GM sh products.
Not surprisingly, Monsantos shares fell after this news, but it
plans to succeed with GM wheat. That seems unlikely, given that the
U.S. made itself unpopular in the E.U., as Wikileaks revealed earlier
this year, by trying to bully the E.U. into accepting GM crops with
heavy-handed threats. That backred: the EUs agricultural commis-
sioner, Dacian Ciotos, made it clear that traditional agriculture would
be favoured above all, and that the diversity of diets arising from nat-
ural biodiversity was the EUs primary interest. In March, the member
states agricultural ministers got together and discussed how to out-
right ban all GM crop cultivation within the E.U.; their main concern
is the protection of biodiversity, something that GM agribusiness sim-
ply cannot do if it wishes to pursue a protable business model.
Europe as well as Japan cancelled their grain contracts with Australia
because of GM contamination.
This spirit of rebellion gave rise to a law suit launched against
Monsanto by some 60 Canadian farmers, seed businesses, and organ-
ic organizations to protect themselves preemptively against the tac-
tics the company used in the infamous Schmeiser case some years
back. Organic Seed Growers & Trade Organizations vs. Monsanto was
led by the 270,000 member strong group on March 30 in federal dis-
trict court in Manhattan, and hopes to achieve protection from GM
seed contamination for organic farmers.
Even more surprising is the National Research Council report,
released in May, which calls for a radical transformation of U.S. agri-
cultural practices, marketing, policies and science in order to achieve
sustainable farming. This report was followed by a frontal attack on
the ultimate sacred cow of modern capitalismglobalizationand
was delivered at the 111th General Meeting of the American Society
for Microbiology in New Orleans on May 23. It declared that global-
ization was to blame for many food-borne diseases, all preventable if
food production was done locally and consumed locally.
The greatest surprise for me was an editorial in the venerable jour-
nal Nature, which for almost two decades has been biotechs most
powerful cheerleader. But now Natures editors have come back down
to earth and declared that poverty, not lack of food production, is the
root cause of world hunger and that GM crops are not the panacea
for world hunger, despite many assertions to the contrary by their
proponents.
I
C. Holdrege & S. Talbott, Beyond Biotechnology, University of Kentucky, 2008
G. Tansey & T. Rajotte, eds. The Future Control of Food, Earthscan, 2008
B. Esterbrok, Andrews McMeel, 2011, Tomatoland, How Modern Agriculture
Destroyed Our Most Alluring Food
Alternative Medicine Review, April 2010 issue on the nutritional science of
organic food
www.cban.caCanadian Biotechnology Action Network for information on how
to avoid GM products
National Health FederationUS-based source for all Codex-related issues:
www.thenhf.com
http://anh-europe.org/news for updates on EU decisions re GMOs
Why Monsanto always Wins, www.truth-out.org Feb. 22, 2011
Genetically Engineered Rice is a Trojan Horse: Misled by Bill Gates and
Monsanto, Dr. Mercolas website, June 21, 2011
On Monsanto, GMOs etc in India: www.kisanswaraj.in www.indiagminfo.org
www.iamnolabrat.com
Statistics on GMO crops in developing countries: Nature, March 3, 2011
Massive animal cloning research project ended due to 90% death rate and
unnecessary suffering, www.NaturalNews.com May 5, 2011
GM food crops with human genes, see www.narmer.wordpress.com
2011/01/25
Japanese scientist creates edible meat alternative made from recycled human
waste www.inhabitat.com/poop-burger-ja
M. Specter, Test-Tube Burgers, The New Yorker, May 23, 2011
A. Mummert et al, Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition,
Economics & Human Biology, vol. 9/3, July 2011
Dr. Shiv Chopras comment on Canadas food being toxic is in the Canadian
Medical Association Journal, April 28, 2011
R. Mendes et al. Deciphering the Rhizosphere Microbiome for Disease-
Suppressive Bacteria, Science, 2011, May 7 issue
The Research Council of Norway, May 5, 2011, Report: Heavy agricultural
machinery can damage the soil.
The Disappearing Nutrient on phosphate-based fertilizers, Nature, October 8,
2009 On health-promoting soil bacteria, see Nature October 9, 2008, article
What lies beneath
S. Edwards, Study Finds Links Between GMOs and Current Health Care Crisis,
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, April 2011. See website of Institute of
BioAcoustics Biology and Sound Health www.SoundHealthOptions.com
Emergency: Pathogen New to Science Found in Roundup Ready GM Crops by
Institute of Science in Society on I-SIS website www.i-sisi.org/uk
Genetically Modied Soy Diets Lead to Ovary and Uterus Changes in Rats in
Hufngton Post, July 10, 2010
Dangerous Toxins From Genetically Modied Plants Found in Women and
Fetuses by Jeffrey M. Smith, www.responsibletechnology.org May 27, 2011
93% of unborn babies contaminated with GMO toxins on
www.NaturalNews.com May 24, 2011, based on a Canadian study published in
Reproductive Technology, May 2011
When Food Kills by N. D. Kristof, The New York Times, June 12, 2011
Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, April 5, 2011: Last resort
antibiotics use on the rise via www.sciencedaily.com story
2011/04/110403141320htm
Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, April 13, 2010, Report: Impact of
antibiotic treatments on bacteria in the intestines of animals.
F. Meng et al. Oxidation of the Cysteine-rich regions of Parkinsons perturbs its
E3 Ligase activity and contributes to protein aggregation. Molecular
Neurodegeneration vol. 6/1, 2011
The studies showing that 50% of US children have chronic diseases and 21%
developmental disabilities is found in the June 2011 issue of Pediatrics
L. Trasande et al. Reducing the staggering cost of environmental disease in
children estimated at $ 76.6 billion in 2008, Health Affairs, May 2011
The story about the Supreme Court of India temporarily banning endosulfan was
in The Times of India, May 14, 2011
R. Ananda, More problems with glyphosate [Roundup]: US rice growers sound
alarm, May 23, 2011, from www.globalresearch.ca
The toxic origins of disease in PLoS, web-based medical journal, July 2007,
vol. 5/7, www.plosbiology.org
On the UN admitting that ecological agriculture outperforms all GM methods,
see www.stltoday.com/business
Report on chemical-free pest management cutting rice waste, see Eureka March
19, 2011 On strawberries grown organically see www.grist.org/organic-food
On the State of Maine laws on food sovereignty see www.globalresearch.ca and
www.globalmotherdivine.org
NDP Leader Jack Layton on food labeling, e-mail from canadasndp@ndp.ca
April 26, 2011
The editorial on need for more than the GMO message in world farming is in the
journal Nature, July 29, 2010; the whole issue is devoted to agriculture
J.P. Reganold et al. Transforming US Agriculture, Science, May 5, 2011
The editorial on the harmful effects on agriculture and food safety from
globalization was published in American Society for Microbiology, May 23, 2011
Wikileaks publication on US political pressure on the EU to accept GMO foods
was published by NaturalNews on December 24, 2010, www.naturalnews.com
The State of Maryland refusing/banning arsenic in poultry was in
www.i-sis.org/uk and www.news.change.org Feb 15, 2011
For details on the US moving to ban GM salmon, GE rice etc. see www.cban.ca,
June 17, 2011
The EUs stance on GM foods as being inferior see www.euractive.com February
15, 2011
On the cancellation of grain contracts with Australia by Japan and the EU, see
www.naturalnews.com, January 3, 2011
See CBAN also for the labeling on GM sh and the EU refusing supersalmon,
and the stock shares of Monsanto being affected, May 8, 2011
On the UK ripping up ignoring requirements for cloned meat products, see Mail
Online, May 28, 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk
Update Spring 2013
In India, the Supreme Courts decision to temporarily ban endosulfan
is under review, as ordered, and the preliminary suggestion by an
expert panel has been, as of November 21, 2012, to exhaust only the
existing stocks of the pesticide and then manufacture no more, leave
alone import any of it. What will actually be done, is not yet pub-
lished at press time.
It has been known for a long time that garden pesticides are linked
to Parkinsons disease. As of early 2012, that link is approaching out-
right proof because scientists at the University of California in Los
Angeles have found actual pathways by which this process leading to
Parkinsons happens. See J.S. Soares et al. Diagnostic power of diffuse
reectance spectroscopy for targeted detection of breast lesions with
microcalcifications, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, January 2012.
The European Union has initiated a program to track expo-
somes, i.e. environmental toxins that people are exposed to in food,
air, water etc. The US National Research Council and the National
Institute for Environmental Health Sciences announced that they agree
with the EU and want to initiate such a program in the US because
they see this as a major priority. Nature, November 29, 2012 p. 647.
In the 1990s anybody who suggested that cleaning materials and
objects of daily use could have anything to do with asthma was still
considered in need of a psychiatrist. Now research is informing gov-
ernment policy in the UK with respect to the toxicity of cleaning
materials and the lining of food cans. See: R. E. Ghosh et al. Asthma
and occupation in the 1958 birth cohort, Thorax, Jan 21, 2013. See also
L. Trasande et al. Bisphenol A exposure is associated with low-grade
urinary albumin excretion in children of the United States, Kidney
International, January 9, 2013. The proof is provided that BPA can
cause kidney disease.
Most encouraging is the evidence now published that all that anti-
smoking effort, protecting children from second-hand smoke etc is actu-
ally working: C. Millett et al. Hospital admissions for childhood asthma
after smoke-free legislation in England, Pediatrics, vol. 131, 2013.
A major battle started against Monsanto in January 2013 involv-
ing tens of thousands of farmers, both those who plant only organic
food plants and those who use conventional seeds. They all agree on
one thing, though: they want to stop the genetic contamination of
their crop seeds with Monsantos genetically engineered seeds. The
rst day in court was on January 10, 2013. The presentation made in
court can be downloaded from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade
Association website. This document is of great interest to anybody who
is ghting GMOs because it provides the entire history, science,
progress, use and political activities associated with GMOs ever since
they rst entered the market in the early 1990s.
A major dustup has occurred because of a new study that showed
just how toxic and carcinogenic Roundup herbicide actually is: G.-E.
Seralini et al. Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and
Roundup-tolerant genetically modied maize, Food and Chemical
Toxicology, August 2012. The industry went into high gear to protect
its product, alleging the study is fraud. The matter has gone to court
in France. Meanwhile, Russia and Poland decided they were not going
to import any GM maize, and Poland passed a ban on all GMO food
plants. They are able to do so because since 2010, the EU gave the full
authority on such matters to each member state as their national
responsibility and right. This may be so perhaps because the EU
Agriculture minister, Dacian Ciolos, holds a doctorate in organic farming.
In Canada, the results of a Leger Marketing poll published in July
2012 showed that 91% of Canadians want their food to be clearly
labeled and want this labeling to be mandatory. For more informa-
tion go to www.okanagongreens.ca).
Finally, as of June 2012, the US FDA has been ordered by a feder-
al court to address the antibiotic resistance issue and evaluate the
risks of the use of antibiotics in food producing animal food. The
order actually stated that the FDA is to withdraw approval for the
non-therapeutic use of penicillin and tetracycline in livestock produc-
tion, unless the makers of those drugs can produce evidence that their
use is safe. For detailed information also on what happened when
some countries stopped the use of these drugs, go to Natural
Resources Defense Council, Center for Science in the Public Interest,
and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The Guardian reported on February 12, 2013, that Bhutan is the
worlds rst country to commit itself to a wholly organic way of rais-
ing foods. All forms of chemical pesticides and fertilizers are no longer
allowed; the government expects to be the rst self-sufcient food-
producing country.
The Five Pillars Of Food Safety
1
By Shiv Chopra
2
, B.V.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.
Fellow, World Health Organization
The most fundamental needs for healthy living include air, water and
food. During the last fty to sixty years all three of these gifts of
nature have increasingly been polluted with a concomitantly increas-
ing incidence of untimely death due to cancer and various other
chronic diseases.
For instance, air is no more its natural self to contain appropriate
proportions of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is being forced
to contain larger and larger amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide,
carbon monoxide, methane and other toxic gases of industrial origin.
Similarly, water is no more its natural self. It is chlorinated, uor-
idated and made to contain a huge variety and quantity of toxic
products that not only are harmful to human health but also to that
of every living being on the earth.
The worst harm of all is due to what is occurring in factory farm
operations to obtain extra yields of food. Crops and food-producing
animals are being stimulated with the following ve harmful materi-
als, including:
Hormones
Antibiotics
Rendered Slaughterhouse Waste
Genetically Modied Organisms (GMOs)
Pesticides
1 Dr. Chopras Five Pillars of Food Safety is published here with his kind permission.
HF
2 Author, Corrupt to the Core - Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower, Kos
Publishing 2009 www.shivchopra.com
Due to the uninhibited use of these products, Canadian and
American food is presently the most toxic to health. Harmful effects
that these products cause in people include immune disorders, repro-
ductive disorders, neurological disorders, antibiotic resistant super-
bugs, Bovine Spongiform Disease (BSE) and its human variant
Creudtzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).
Ironically, these products were approved many years ago by the
Canadian and American governments in contravention of the Food
and Drugs Act of both these countries. On the other hand, the
European Union has banned three of these products, including hor-
mones, antibiotics and rendered slaughterhouse waste, in food pro-
duction while action is afoot to disallow GMOs and pesticides as well.
Obviously, the European approach to food production should be
the preferred route but Canada and U.S.A. disagree. The matter is
being fought in the World Trade Organization for the last many years
with no end in sight while China, India, Brazil and other industrial-
izing nations watch anxiously from the sidelines.
EMF Protection
1. The Damaging Effects Of Electropollution*
April 2011
The good news is that many of these EMF diseases
may be preventable by simple environmental manipulation,
if society chooses to pay attention. Unless public outrage
intervenes, I am afraid that our diseases of civilization
will get worse. Good science is not enough to force
sensible public policy. Only citizens can do that.
Dr. Samuel Milham in Dirty Electricity, 2010
This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may
cause brain cancer. Users, especially pregnant women
and children, should keep it away from the head and body.
Currently proposed legislation for cell phones: Bill LD 1014, spon-
sored by Legislator Andrea Boland in Maine, USA.
Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but one thing is certain: it is very
protable. According to Buddhism, all suffering derives from igno-
rance, and it rarely hurts until it is too late; ignorance keys into the
addictive potential in all of us and, thereby, allows somebody to make
a huge pile of money on enslavement.
The detrimental health effects of cell phones, WiFi, electromagnet-
ic elds (EMFs), and the microwave-based technology we use daily
makes worrying about our kids experimenting with drugs, sexual
escapades, alcoholic binges, or a touch of crime insignicantin
comparison to the WiFi-equipped school you send them to, the cell
phones you may have bought for them, the hours they spend in front
*
In April 2011 and March and April 2012, Vitality Magazine published an article by
me on EMF issues; they have here been combine into one item and updated to
December 2012.
of the TV (forget the contentthe TV itself is worse), and the
microwave oven from which they often receive their meals. Sex,
booze, drugs, and crime are part of the dark side of lifes education:
one often learns from those mess-ups to go on to make healthy choic-
es. Now consider that this progressive and seductive radiation tech-
nology has the power to obliterate life, phase out our biological
future, and kill the brain.
I am one of those suckers seriously injured by cell phones. Our
solar-powered cottage on Manitoulin is far from phone lines; so, for
25 years we used public phones. Last summer, a cell phone tower was
erected 1 mile from my study window. Being a social animal, I
thought this was fabulous! Over a period of two months I quickly
developed indescribable headaches, piercing pains in my right eye,
and spontaneous bleeding from my right ear. My ophthalmologist
diagnosed two cataracts in my right eye: the hallmark of microwave
radiation injury (age-related cataracts appear in both eyes), as we
know from research begun on WW II U.S. Navy personnel injured by
radar equipment. In a future Vitality issue I will discuss the successful
treatment I am undergoing and how I did not turn into a Luddite.
I am in stellar company: World Health Organization Director
General, Gro Harlem Brundtland (19982003) and convener of the
World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, did
not permit any cell phones at WHOs Geneva headquarters because
they caused her debilitating headaches. Of course, she had the wrath
of the industry descend upon her accordingly. She is currently suffer-
ing from cancer.
In 2004, the WHO dened electro hypersensitivity (EHS) as: a
phenomenon where individuals experience adverse health effects
while using or being in the vicinity of devices emanating electric, mag-
netic, or electromagnetic elds a sometimes debilitating problem
[occurring] several orders of magnitude under the limits of interna-
tionally accepted standards.
In fact, everybody is at risk. Epidemiologist Dr. Sam Milham rst
studied childhood leukemia clusters in the 1970s that eventually
proved beyond any doubt that the risk for this disease is directly relat-
ed to the presence of power lines, and subsequently also cell phone
towers; those areas of the world that have little or no electricity have
almost no incidence of leukemia. In addition to leukemia, evidence
now supports that cell phones cause especially brain tumors, can-
cer of the eye, salivary glands, testicles, non-Hodgkins lymphoma,
and Alzheimers. This radiation also contributes to the development
of autism and ADHD. While several causes are known for all of these
conditions, research has conrmed that the use of cell and cordless
phones and lap-top computers, speed up their manifestation such
that people in their 30s are now beginning to be diagnosed with
advanced Alzheimers. The degranulation process of live brain cells
when exposed to cell phone radiation has been experimentally
demonstrated. Cancer incidence is also significantly higher within
400 meters of a cell phone tower or transmitter site. Trent University
researcher Magda Havas may now have discovered a third type of
diabetes caused exclusively by electromagnetic radiation.
The most vulnerable are children, pregnant women, human
brains in general, testicles, and ovaries. This was conrmed in 2007
by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for
Research on Cancer and in 2010 by a Swedish government study, all
showing that cell phone use increases the chances of brain cancer
by 40%. Last year, the European Journal of Oncology reported that
serious heart and related problems (e.g. arrhythmia, palpitations,
heart utter, racing heart beat, fainting, profuse sweating etc) can
occur to pulsed radiation as low as 0.5% of the existing Canadian
and US federal guidelines which permit 10 mill micro/Wm2. The truly
science-based exposure guidelines demonstrate that nobody should
be exposed to more than 1 microW/m2.
When it comes to any type of death industry, the most reliable
information comes from the military. On the website www.safeschool.ca
you can download a recently declassied US Navy document from
1971 which summarizes the more than 2,300 studies on the health
effects from microwave radiation known way back then! Of course
they knewmicrowave technology was already part of the military
arsenal intended to inict bodily harm. It is the Military University in
Germany that developed EMF protection standards for civilian build-
ing codes. In addition to people, building materials require protection
from rapid corrosion caused by radiofrequencies and microwaves.
In 2008, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked the federal
government for an emergency fund of $ 123 billion over 5 years to
avoid building collapse.
The nancial problems caused by this irresponsible application of
radiation-based technology includes agriculture and cows. Plants
avoid high EMF levels by not growing as high as they normally
would; when the EMF source is removed, they grow normally. As
reported by Dr. Milham, when the dirty electricity was neutralized
by Graham/Stetzer plugs in a U.S. school, a dairy farmer a quarter
of a mile away noticed that his cows each gave an average of ten
pounds more milk per day, beginning the day the school received its
lters. The cows were responding to dirty electricity being removed
from the ground currents. In 2008 the French court ordered a power
company to compensate cattle farmers for EMF damage.
A thoroughly depressing fact is that the main reason gorillas in
Africa were reduced in numbers by 90% over the past two decades is
because their habitat was destroyed by miners for a rare mineral
called coltan. This mineral is apparently indispensable to the produc-
tion of cell phones. The international efforts to save the gorillas is
appearing to have some success, but nothing has happened so far, it
seems to rescue the miners themselvesthey are primarily children
even as young as 6 years.
Living creatures are electrical beings able to function only within
specic frequencies. Devra Davis observes: The difference between
being alive and being dead is just one thingthe presence of electri-
cal activity in the brain. Thoracic surgeon Dr. William Rae, the co-
founder of the American Academy for Environmental Medicine with
Linus Pauling and Dr. Thoren Randolph, became originally interest-
ed in environmental inuences on health when he himself became
seriously EMF-sensitive in the 1970s from operating room equipment.
His research led him to recognize the deleterious inuence of pesti-
cides and many other environmental toxins, all of which cause multi-
system damage. The immune system is the primary target which does
its job through electrically charged biological substances such as neu-
rotransmitters, hormones, and peptides which transmit faster than
the speed of light. It has been known since the 1990s that environ-
mental illness from biological toxins and electro hypersensitivity
share the process of a disastrous reduction in the nervous system
enzyme cholinesterase. Its sudden depletion cause depression and
also suicidal behavior.
All these biological processes have their inherent timing, repair
and defensive responses, especially during pregnancy and brain
development. Hence, the industry safety standards, with which gov-
ernment regulators collaborate, are totally absurd. Devra Davis
explains: They are based on the imaginary SAM, the Standard
Anthropomorphic Man based on military recruits of 1989: six foot
two tall, about 200 lbs, and never exposed to a cell phone. The sub-
sequently constructed safety standards date to 1962 when nobody
knew the difference between heat-producing radiation and
microwave radiation, and cell phones did not exist.
The Safe School Committee in Collingwood (www.safeschool.ca) is
ghting the WiFi craze that has hit Canadian schools. Even though
WiFi is slower than landline-transmitted connections, and even
though there is a documented 40% increase in cardiac arrest in chil-
dren under 13 years directly related to this type of radiation, the
Toronto School Board is hell-bent on WiFi for all schoolspresumably
until no brains are left to zap. So eager are our guardians of educa-
tion to implement what they call Vision of Hope (abysmally black
humor unintended), they even exceed the totally inappropriate safe-
ty standards set by Health Canadastandards that date from a time
when wireless phones were Dick Tracey-type sci- watches.
Ken Dryden expressed outrage on March 12 (Globe & Mail) about
the lack of mandatory protection from head injuries in hockey, stat-
ing: How could we be so stupid! Such outrage applies to WiFi in
schools even more because even more childrenall of them in fact
will be affected. In a 2009 review of the usually irreversible harm
EMFs cause, neuroscientists O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute
in Sweden, wrote: Today no-one would consider having a radio-
active wrist watch with glowing digits (as you could in the 1950s),
having your childrens shoes tted in a strong X-ray machine (as you
could in the 1940s), keeping radium in open trays on your desk (as
scientists could in the 1930s), or X-raying each other at your garden
party (as physicians did in the 1920s). In retrospect that was just plain
madness. However, the persons doing so were not less intelligent
knowledge was decient, as was a competent risk analysis coupled to
a parallel analysis of public needs.
What is happening in other jurisdictions? In 2007, Germany initi-
ate a policy of reducing the use of CAT scans because of their demon-
strated cancer-causing properties, and because their use increased
health care costs (directly and through additional cancer incidence)
by 80% in 40 years. It followed logically that last year Germany
banned the energy efcient CFLS light bulbs because their carcino-
genic radiation exceeds European exposure limits. (I tossed all ours
and put old-fashioned incandescent bulbs back; I found that the
crushing fatigue I thought was aging mysteriously disappeared!)
Many jurisdictions in the US are now framing legislation to deal both
with the bulbs unacceptable levels of radiation and the difculty of
their disposal because of the high mercury content threatening the
ground water.
The European Unions September 2009 report on EMFs stressed the
serious and irreversible damage to health and environments from
EMF radiation and called on all member states to take precautionary
action. Shortly afterwards the possibility of outlawing the use of cell
phones for children under 18 was discussed in the EU parliament.
The UK, whose national Department of Health is as industry-
friendly and science-challenged as our Health Canada, started to sur-
render to reality and on March 11 advised its citizens that they should
text, rather than put their cell phones to their ears.
Switzerland, Finland, Luxemburg, and Austria supply their
schools with the totally radiation-safe ber-optic technology for their
internet and communication needs. Israel has similar legislation in
the works. Those countries also set the maximum level of exposure
between 5 to 10 microW/cm2. Recall: In Canada we are told 1,000
microW/cm2 is safe. Guess on which part of the Earth human
brains will survive!
Meanwhile, we are also being threatened with smart meters
which tend to increase electricity costs for people and expose them to
massive amounts of radiation. As of February of this year, California
allows people to refuse their installation, because a formal investiga-
tion showed that these US-made devices never passed all the manda-
tory regulatory hurdles, are hazardous to health, and can cause re.
Devra Davis in her superb book Disconnect explains how the
most serous practical challenge to this industry comes from the
worlds large insurance companies, such as the Sterling Group of
Lloyds of London. Having nearly been nearly wiped out when the
asbestos-related claims became undeniable in the early 1990s, the
cell-phone industry was informed they would not be backed when
radiation hits the fan, as it must. The trigger for this decision was the
UKs 2005 Stewart Commission whose chair, citing worldwide
research demonstrating harm to childrens brains from cell phones,
told the mobile phone industry to refrain from promoting the use of
mobile phones by children. In Canada, liability is certainly worth
testing in court, because the 2007 Human Rights Commission report
on Environmental Illness specically included harm from EMF radia-
tion as being real and requiring accommodation.
2. Why Our World Is Electropolluted March 2012
If something is invented by and for the military, it is certain to be
effective and lethaland the research on that effectiveness and toxi-
city will be perfect. And industrial capitalists invariably view such
military gizmos as having great prot potentialparticularly if
theyre re-packaged and promoted as benecial to the public. Hence,
the science behind atom bombs dropped on Japan in World War II led
soon after to cancer radiation therapy and mammographytwo of
the most lucrative practices in modern medicine. Similarly, biological
warfare weapons such as DDT and chemotherapy proved to be enor-
mously lucrative in their peace-time applicationstheir deadly prop-
erties being undiminished despite re-packaging. Originally, the mili-
tary objected to the declassication of both, but industry interests pre-
vailed.
Today, its World War II radar technology that has been harnessed
to create a near universal addiction and worldwide dependence on
telecommunications. Anything that facilitates and enhances the
human ability to communicate plugs into a powerful primal urge.
We can say no to radiation and chemotherapy, and we can do per-
fectly well without pesticidesbut we cannot do without telephones,
the internet, or electricity. Millions of people use cell phones as if they
were an indispensable body part; thousands of households use
microwave ovens daily, unaware that they are ruining the nutrients
in their food; well-meaning parents irradiate their infants with baby
monitors; and most of us are zapped continuously by smart meters.
All things wireless have taken the world by storm, supposedly serving
progress.
Very few people know that all these gadgets are allowed to prolif-
erate on the basis of outright fraudulent research. Most dont know
that current safety standards are so completely at variance with gen-
uine scientic evidence as to be truly absurd: in fact, our regulatory
authorities are supporting the unfolding of a public health disaster.
There simply is no research proving the safety of this technology as
we know it. None at all.
Wireless technology has undergone no genuine safety tests
because existing standards only apply to anything above 2.4 giga-
hertz of the radio spectrum, and anything below that level was sim-
ply assumed safe when commercial standards were adopted in 1997.
This rests on the assumption that non-thermal radiation is harmless;
non-thermal means not-heat producing. Radio waves and
microwaves do produce heat, but only at very high concentrations. At
low concentrations they do not produce heat but, instead, cause other
equally serious problems affecting all organs of the body.
This problem started with Hermann Schwan, inventor of the
microwave oven. As a scientist who worked for the Nazi regime, he
was brought to the U.S. in 1947 along with 1,400 others under
Operation Paperclip which allowed them to escape war crime pros-
ecution in return for employment with the U.S. government. Schwan
became a professor in Pennsylvania and continued radar research.
He believed that radio and microwaves could only be harmful at
intensities above 100 microwatts per square centimeter when they
produce heat. He added a safety factor of 10, and in 1953 announced
the safety limit for humans at 10 microwatts per square centimeter
(10 mW/cm2) which in 1965 was accepted as doctrine.
This safe level allowed the military to continue using radiation
for their own purposes. This standard also saved the U.S. government
untold millions in liability payments to injured soldiers and industri-
al workers from the war years and provided liability protection into
the future. And real estate companies were delighted because the for-
mer restrictions on developing land too close to radiation facilities no
longer applied. Had the already known facts about harm from non-
thermal levels of radiation informed the making of this safety stan-
dard, some 498,000 acres of valuable real estate would have been lost
to the market. (See Becker and Brodeur listed at end.)
Schwan and the scientists of his generation already knew of the
radiation sickness reported by wartime radar technicians who often
became blind from cataracts. Indeed, it was because of these reports
that the discussion about a need for a safety standard began. At the
very time that Schwans standard was developed, the Soviets were
microwaving the U.S. embassy staff in Moscow to see if this wartime
radar/microwave technology could disrupt information, addle brains,
and mess with behaviour among the embassy staff. It sure did. The
U.S. government was fully aware of this Soviet espionage project, but
kept silent for yearsjust to see what would happen. After all, it was
a perfect science project (for the sake of which the glaring ethical
inconsistency with the 1940s US-led Nurnberg trials was convenient-
ly ignored). The Germans doing medical experiments on people was
evil; this project, however, could be massaged to aid some greater
good. The U.S. ambassador died of cancer and many staff members
developed those forms of cancer, birth defects, infertility, and more
which are characteristic of such non-thermal radiation exposure. Not
until 1976 did this government betrayal of its own staff become the
subject of congressional investigation.
Today, the complete bibliography of more than 2,000 scientic
reports on non-thermal radiation damage compiled before 1970 are
available. They were declassied by the military in 1971 (see
www.magdahavas.com).
When cell phones hit the market in the early 1990s and WiFi for
computers was invented, it was already known what damage these
products were capable of causing. Most importantly, that early litera-
ture, now supported by an ever-growing body of high-tech and epi-
demiological research, negates the assertion that just some people
are hypersensitive. That same myth was used for decades to down-
play Multiple Chemical Sensitivity as well. The prot from war gadgets,
communication technology, and pesticides is simply too big to resist;
better to blame those few weirdoes who stand in the way of prot.
To put this hypersensitivity of the few into perspective, consider
Swedish and American research published last fall which shows that
within the coming decade we are likely to face a 25-fold increase of
brain cancer incidence worldwide. There is no way that any govern-
ment or insurance company can pay for this. Not surprisingly, two of
the worlds largest insurance companies, Lloyds and Swiss Re, have
recommended exclusion clauses to the entire industry for damage
from long-term use of such radiation-producing gadgets.
Researchers have found that cell phone use impairs DNA cellular
repair, and has caused a sharp rise in brain cancer (documented from
cell phone use over the past decade). The facts became so unavoidable
that the usually arch-conservative World Health Organization had no
choice last summer but to declare radiofrequency electromagnetic elds
(RE-EMF) produced by cell phones, Bluetooth, cordless phones, Smart
Meters, baby monitors, and WiFi to be a Class B carcinogen (like
asbestos and DDT).
True, the actual mechanism by which this low-level radiation
caused harm was not understood in the 1940s, even though the fact
of harm was known and documented. Today, our understanding is so
thorough, it exceeds the evidence we have of the harm done by DDT,
asbestos, and smoking by far. Yet, the International Commission on
Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), established in 1992,
continues to stick to Schwanns standard and even deliberately mis-
quotes, disguises, or ignores this enormous body of knowledge. It con-
tinues to provide guidelines to governments and industry based on
research published before WiFi technology had even left the laborato-
ry and become commercially available. To support these absurd
guidelines, even fraudulent research projects were undertaken in the
UK (see Mark Anslow).
In Canada an interesting case of suppression of evidence exists in
the federal Report LTR-CS-98 of April 1973. It provided the evidence
that microwave radiation is an environmental pollutant and a
threat to human health. And yet, Health Canada established its
Code 6 by following ICNIRP guidelines for radio frequencies and pub-
licly repeated that propaganda about non-thermal radiation as
being safe as recently as September 2010.
The many international resolutions presented by scientists to gov-
ernments the world over demanding the public be protected from this
technology are simply ignored, but their urgency is increasing. When
cell phones rst became available in the early 90s, the Council of
Europe, aware of the science since the 1930s about the dangers of
radar to human health, requested that young people in particular be
protected from such commercial devices. Last April, the Council did
so again, in even stronger terms and armed with even more research.
In February of this year, the Ontario Teachers Union came to the
defense of their students safety and demanded a general WiFi black-
out in schools. Some schools have done so already (Globe & Mail, Feb
13, 2012).
There is no doubt that we live in a time in which science consis-
tently takes a back seat to industry interests and that governments
consistently support industry, not public health or medical facts. If you
suspect that government is selling us out, body and soul, to toxic indus-
tries for prot, you are not mistaken.
Just like the FDAs Dr. David Graham, and Health Canadas Shiv
Chopra, the radiation industry too has its whistleblowers: Barrie
Trower, as reported in the Toronto Star on August 26, 2010, is a former
British Secret Service Microwave Weapons Specialist who recently
spoke at the University of Toronto. He stated that Canada is one of
the world leaders in microwave radiation research, having docu-
mented the rst recognized symptoms of radiation sickness in 1932 in
concert with the U.S. government. Canada shares 13 secret code
names for this research which documents the damage. Trower also
pointed out that there isnt a school in the world that hasnt seen an
increase in aggression [and other behavioral problems] when WiFi
was introduced. He stated: By 1971 we knew everything that need-
ed to be known. A 1976 document summarizing U.S. Defense
Intelligence research is the saddest and most despicable document
ever published in history. The document lists all of the health haz-
ards caused by wireless devices and concludes: This should be kept
secret to preserve industrial prot. Trowers also cited a 1950s report
stating: If this paper becomes known around the world, it will threat-
en military and commercial interests. He especially condemned
Health Canadas Code 6, stating that the science-based safety level
published in the BioInitiative Report is 0.1 microwatts per cm2not
Canadas 600 to 1,000 mW/cm2!
Due to the determined suppression of the evidence over three
quarters of a century, it is vitally important to get legal rulings that
create a foundation for appropriate liability and the defense of pub-
lic health through successful case law. That will force the invention of
better technology. Last year the famous microwave activist Arthur
Firstenberg brought a case regarding deployment of cell phone-relat-
ed technology before the federal district court in New Mexico on the
basis of the industrys infringement of the Americans with Disability
Act. The judge ruled that the Telecommunications Act preempts the
Americans with Disabilities Act, even if such an interpretation would
condemn a class of citizens to death because of their disabilities. The
judge also ruled that the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process
Clause of the U.S. Constitutions 14th Amendment was not applicable.
An appeal was launched on February 21. My hunch is that
because of the denial of fundamental human rights, this legal action
will now move out of the polarization between industry and science
and into the territory of what lawyers call rst principles, in this
case liability law and established case law on harm done from what-
ever source.
Yes, the danger posed by EMF radiation is signicant, but it is pos-
sible to save yourself and your loved ones. In Part 2 of this article, I
will share the information and resources that I used to restore my
health and make my home and workplace safe. Put simply, the answer
to bad technology is not no technology, but good technology, just as
bad medicine is cured by good medicine.
3. Strategies For Removing Or Reducing Dirty Electricity And
EMF Radiation April 2012
Shell redecorate your home
from the cellar to the dome
and go on to the appalling job
of overhauling you!
Henry Higgins in Lerner and Lowes My Fair Lady
The fears of Henry Higgins may now become reality for you, dear
readers, whose lives and homes might be turned upside down by what
I hope to teach you about protection from electro pollution that
invades us all without our knowledge or consent. As promised last
month: the answer to bad technology is good technology, and there is
lots. Here are two compelling reasons to act on this information.
Firstly: The symptoms of electro pollution-induced sickness involve
all organs with many debilitating symptoms, from skin rashes to can-
cer; they are part of the Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) spec-
trum. In fact, Dr. William Rea of the American Academy for
Environmental Medicine became EMF sensitive himself from the oper-
ating room lights used when he was still a surgeon. Today, treatment
of EMF sensitivity is as much a part of the work and training of
AAEM-trained doctors as is everything involving environmental
chemical toxins. The symptoms of environmental illness provide
potentially inexhaustible revenues for Big Pharma and related indus-
tries. Your personal descent into a nightmarebe it by cell phone or
lawn pesticidesis a dream come true for a business that treats only
symptoms, rarely causes. Recovering from encounters of the EMF kind
is not only a personal achievement but can be a public service: you
speak truth to the power of phony medicine that grows and prots by
sickness.
Radiation in very low, non-thermal levels causes:
neurological damage (migraines, anxiety, muscle and joint pain,
memory loss, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, insomnia); u-like symp-
toms (muscle spasms, etc.); cardiac problems (palpitations, chest
pain, blood pressure irregularities, shortness of breath, arrhyth-
mias, strokes); respiratory distress (asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis,
pneumonia); dermatological symptoms (skin rashes, facial ush-
ing from computers and lamps, itchy skin, swelling of face or
neck); ophthalmological distress (burning and pressure behind
eyes, cataracts especially in one eye rst, increased light sensitivity).
Then there are thyroid problems with weight gain and hair loss,
swollen lymph nodes, bleeding ears or nose, frequent urination,
constant ringing in the ears, night sweats, pain in teeth with mer-
cury llings which act as conductors, and finally very specic can-
cers, especially gliomastwo thirds of which are attributed to wire-
less gadgets, especially cell phones.
If I paired up all the drugs listed in the current CPS (Compendium of
Pharmaceuticals and Specialties) meant to treat all those symptoms
by conventional standards of ignorance I would need all its 2,800
pages. Almost all of these drugs (some glorious exceptions exist!)
make the sick get sicker quicker, as Dr. Sherry Rogers of the AAEM
says. If you dont check for EMF pollution rst, you will be drugged
accordingly, stress your liver even more, run up Medicare costs with-
out getting better, and overtax your mostly clueless doctors who are
unlikely to tell you to do an electro pollution housecleaning.
Secondly, this zapping of people and animals must stop. The
injured consumer and liability law may succeed in doing so. This
invisible poison wrecks human brains, causes sperm to deteriorate,
ovaries to malfunction, and fetuses to die. So, there goes the human
race, and for what? For snazzy communication conveniences that
could be made without genocidal side effects? Hyperbole? Well, I am
in with the angels: all this shocking information is available on
PubMedthe international repository of mainstream medical
research. Besides, this deadly poison arose from the weapons indus-
try, and nothing is more mainstream than that.
Prevention
Fatigue and headaches, infertility, and your kids ADHD are likely
caused by your home, school, or office environments, which have
become EMF central. Your DNA and every cell in your body is stressed
out as glutathione and melatonin production decrease and cell mem-
branes become porous and leak calcium.
Cords and metal coils and what to do with them:
Any cord that has a two-prong plug is not OK because it isnt ground-
ed, so your body acts as the conducting ground for its radiation. In
the E.U., nothing is two-pronged! Your metal coil mattress on a metal
frame is the most likely cause of disturbed sleep, stiff neck, and leg
cramps. Align a compass with magnetic North away from the bed,
then walk slowly towards it, and you will see that the needle will be
unable to maintain its position above the bed.
All the cells in your body are aligned North-South, but they cant
work properly if you sleep on a metal coil bed and are chronically
stressed while you sleep. Repair and immune work is supposed to
happen during sleep, but it cant because in addition to all cells being
out of synch with the Earths health-promoting magnetic eld, mela-
tonin production is impaired by all these gadgets whose electromag-
netic pulse is amplied by the coils in the mattress and the metal
frame of the bed. When the bodys melatonin production is impaired,
insomnia results in the short term, and cancer in the long term.
Remedial action:
Replace your bed with a wood frame and a foam or cotton mattress.
If you have become extremely sensitive, you need a radiation-protec-
tive canopy (only the Swiss products are reliable). And the advice to
sleep with your feet facing south is given in old medical textbooks
including Oslers. This is also recommended by Chinese medicine
practitioners. However, if your bedroom has digital gadgets (clock, TV,
cell phone, portable phone, baby monitor, lap-top on standby, and
the rest of the deadly WiFi stuff), sleeping N-S wont make any differ-
ence. Its all got to go out of the bedroom and then N-S orientation
may have a benecial effectwhich by the way is not just an opin-
ion but can be objectively measured with a body voltage meter, as I
have done.
Kitchen Appliances:
That electric cooking range is literally a pain, as is the blender. I
always wondered why I was dead tired just before my parties had
even begun. I was zapped from standing at the stove, which resulted
in my sleepwalking through years of family events with a smile and
a handful of Advil in my system to control terric headaches. I eat
organic, so my liver let me get away with it. I now cook on a fully
vented gas stove; funnily, I had to get rid of my gas stove 16 years ago
as it was poisoning me with carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide
because then exterior venting hoods were not mandatory and pilot
lights were permitted. I switched to electric which rescued me from
chronic low-grade gas poisoning, but I got zapped by EMFs instead.
Now, back to exterior vented gas cooking without pilot lights, I am actu-
ally present in mind and body and undrugged at family gatherings!
That microwave oven will radiate you within 9 feet, and wrecks
the nutrients in your food. (In my view, its smart to dismantle your
microwave before discarding, so nobody thinks they found a treas-
ure.) And the telephones sound-amplifying magnet kills off brain
cellsnot as badly as cell phones though; blurred vision and earache
is often the rst sign of intolerance. Use the speaker phone. Your
metal-base ofce chair, and metal ling cabinet and window frame,
if in direct line with a cell phone tower, cause EMFs to bounce around
and penetrate you in front of a computer which (God forbid!) may be
equipped with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Those EMFs take you
in their stride as a conveniently conducting bag of water. I now use a
wooden chair and desk and no metal ling cabinets are nearby.
Home and Ofce Lighting:
You wash your dishes under a uorescent tube light, while the wash-
er and dryer hum away nearby; then you attempt to relax with a
book, but your reading lamps have energy-efcient uorescent bulbs
radiating at carcinogenic levels. Remedial action: Switch to old-fash-
ioned incandescent light bulbs. Rewire your lamps, kitchen, and ofce
equipment with sheathed three-prong plugged cords that ground them.
Dirty Electricity and Smart Meters:
Even if all appliances and lights are off, dirty electricity radiates
through the house from the wiring in the walls which also may be too
close to water pipes, increasing conductivity. In regards to your Smart
Meter, it may be located on the bedroom wall and next to your water
tank; these meters are as harmful as all the inappropriately wired
gadgets in your entire house combined because they also attack
building materials. Canadas building codes require taking natural,
atmospheric radiation into account with building materials and con-
struction, but ignore wireless technology. This EMF radiation is pulsed
radiation which cycles billions of times per second. It hits the mole-
cules of building material on a micro scale, which causes cement
deterioration in particular. (Andrew Michrowksi is one of the experts
in this area and has testied before various panels on it, and also pre-
sented on this effect on building materials at the Total Health Show,
and at the 2010 Whole Life Expo.) In California, a dam collapsed
because of Smart Meters; in B.C., res have started in buildings and
were proven to be caused by the multi-Smart Meter panels.
In the extended resource section to this article is a reference to the
letter which the building code experts sent to BCs government stating
that the lack of appropriate regulation of Smart Meters is also able to
cause electromagnetically induced earthquakesthis isnt a
metaphor and on the western edge of the American continent this is
a very dangerous thing to mess with. All of this is bad for health.
Remedial action:
Dirty electricity problems are solved with Graham / Stetzer lters.
What a relief they are! Your body heaves a sigh of relief when these
are plugged into outlets. And relocating Smart Meters to a safe dis-
tance from your house (more viable in rural areas) requires a ght,
but you are legally entitled to protection from them (see Vitalitys web-
based exhaustive resource list). You can have them moved at your
own cost. As well, shielding materials (metal plates, radiation-repel-
lant paint, curtains) are available for apartments, subdivisions, and
city homes. (See Resource List.)
TVs, Cell phones, Computers:
Now to what we can no longer imagine being without: television, cell
phones, and computers. Last summer, the World Health Organization
included wireless technology in its list of Group 2B carcinogens, so I
am allowed to ponticate! If at all possible, do not use a cell phone.
I no longer do. People in some professions must use them, so turn
them off when not in use, and dont wear them on your bodytry to
keep a three foot distance. Always use earphones or ear buds (not
wireless devices which defeat the purpose) and never hold those dev-
ilish gizmos next to your brain because it increases the risk of brain
tumors. A brain once lost is gone forever.
For computers, Steve Jobs of Apple came to the rescue! My head-
aches had become so unbearable, I could only stand to work at my
computer for about two hours daily. Then I found the low-radiation
Apple Mini computerthe only one so far; the Apple All-in-One has
the computer behind the screen and is no help. Most important: the
keyboard and mouse must be wired; nothing wireless is safe when
close to your body, While the computer wire is regrettably two-
pronged, the computer part of the Mini can be placed at a safe dis-
tance of 3 feet and the large screen, which does not radiate at all, is
OK at 3 feet anyway. Aah! No more pain! I no longer need computer
glasses, my vision doesnt blur, and even my need for reading glasses
is diminished. In regards to laptopsso far I have not encountered
any model by any company that does not radiate powerfully, so
much so that I can feel the pain in my head from any laptop within
6 feet! Laptops must never be put on your lap (theyll zap your
gonads), and never used when plugged in, only on battery! When
plugged in the radiation is amplied. So, the safest way to use a lap-
top is to place it on a non-metal desk, sit back 4 feet, and run it on
battery mode and plug in a separate keyboard which has zero radia-
tion, provided it is wired of course, as the mouse must also be. When
the battery runs down, plug it in to recharge and stay at least 10 feet
away during recharging.
To be connected to the internet in a way that doesnt harm you,
consider a so-called Hub. I use one from Bell called Netgear MBR
10H2, it is a wireless router and sits about 6 feet away from me on a
window sill. I have so far felt nothing from it when working online.
However, when you use this item, make sure that the icons for Airport
and Bluetooth are disabled and that you check out whether the Hub
is enabled for other wireless reception; you can do that via internet.
In my home we never watch television. My last TV experience was
when Clinton was sworn in the rst time; before that I watched the
Berlin Wall fall on TV in real time. We love movies though. The at
LED screens give the least radiation exposure if one sits 6 feet away
from the DVD player. For people with children it is vital to know that
baby monitors, wireless toys, and video games are a hazard. Bio-engi-
neer Robert Steller summarizes: You can have everything, you just
cannot have wireless in any form whatsoever. With ber optics and
far-infrared communication technology now taking over, industry is
beginning to clean up too.
However, any electro pollution clean-up is only reliable if you use
body voltage and gauss meters. Then everything is objectively veried
in your specic circumstances. (See extended resource list for sources.)
Knowledge Is Freedom: Recovery
Those who have become ill as a result of electro pollution must obey
the fundamental rule of environmental medicine: avoidance. A per-
son with liver disease from alcohol or chronic acetaminophen use
may recover, but cannot go back to the booze or the drug. So rstly,
all of that aforementioned remedial work must be done. Life ourish-
es only if we adapt to the requirements of nature. But the injured
body must be healed as well, and here the simple rule is to ask: What
is missing and must be supplied to serve the healing process? This is
very different from: What is the symptom and how can we silence it?
EMF damage caused by technology separates us from the life-
sustaining and healing electromagnetic eld activity of the earth. The
UKs Andrew Goldsworthy informed our Standing Committee on
Health in Ottawa in April 2010 that wireless technology causes dam-
age in two ways:
1) The rst is damage to the cryptochrome pigment which in many
animals controls navigation and in humans controls circadian
rhythms and the immune system also via melatonin production
in the pineal gland in the brain.
2) The second is damage to the membrane of every cell, which inter-
feres with calcium efux. Cryptochrome and melatonin function
in harmony with, and are dependent on, the earths electromag-
netic properties. EMF interference leads to DNA damage, loss of
fertility, and many illnesses including cancer. Download
Goldworthys testimony to our MPs which hopefully scared them
appropriately.
The four pillars of recovery are avoidance, detoxication, nutrient supple-
mentation, and getting back into synch with the earth through
grounding and pulsated electromagnetic eld therapy. All are equally
important!
Avoidance: means a radical clean-up, and clean-up alone stops the
damage and gives healing a chance.
Detoxication: addresses removal of conductive heavy metals in the
body, most efciently done by metal-free dentistry and long-term
daily coffee enemas; these are key also to the cancer protocols of
Dr. Nicolas Gonzalez and the Gerson Institute. Coffee enemas can
switch off those terrible EMF-caused headaches in minutes, while
boosting glutathione production by several hundred times and
safely removing heavy metals.
Supplementation: Glutathione should also be taken orally together
with selenium, potassium, magnesium oxide and citrate, and vita-
min C (to bowel tolerance, i.e. keep increasing the dose of vitamin
C until you get diarrhea, and then lower the dose to just below
that level). Detoxication addresses removal of EMF-conducting
heavy metals in the body, most efciently done by daily coffee
enemas; these are key also to the cancer protocols of Dr. Nicolas
Gonzalez and the Gerson Institute. Coffee enemas can switch off
those terrible EMF-caused headaches in minutes while boosting the
glutathione production several hundred times and safely removing
heavy metals. Glutathione also dramatically reduces stress hor-
mone production and thereby assists healing; it should also be
taken orally together with selenium, potassium, magnesium oxide
and citrate, and vitamin C to bowel tolerance. Glutathione is the
most important antioxidant and detoxier our body produces and
required for all metabolic processes. Melatonin by mouth can
restore sleep, and L-Ornothine is helpful for clearing up brain fog
and dizziness. To boost what has been depleted, eat organic food
and consume fresh squeezed juices. You can discuss all this with
doctors trained by the AAEM or who are members of the OMA
Section of Complementary Medicine, as well as naturopaths.
PEMD Recently, I discovered pulsated electromagnetic eld therapy
which I believe is as important to health as any new breakthrough
in the past 100 years, and is supported by over a thousand double-
blind placebo-controlled studies. This technology allows health to
be restored by using the electromagnetic activity in our bodies in
resonance with the earth to promote healing at all levels.
Electromagnetic field devices such as intelligent Magnetic-
Resonance-Stimulation systems (iMRS) can be purchased for home
use, or you can visit a health professional for a session (see resource
list). In the meantime, for more information www.pemf.com or
mayafabiszak@gmail.com.
I
S. Milham MD, Dirty Electricity, iUniverse, 2010, any bookstore or
www.sammilham.com To understand the concept of dirty electricity this book
is key. It also explains how the Graham/Stetzer lters work and how they are
understood and documented to improve health and protect against the
carcinogenic range of dirty electricity. For success in having proposed cell
towers moved to locations away from children, hospitals etc. see Waterloo
Chronicle, February 15, 2011 article entitled Transmission interrupted? and
March 9, 2011 WIND Mobile looking at other tower sites.
D. L. Davis, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, Dutton, 2010
M. Havas & C. Rees, Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless
Revolution, 2009. www.madgahavas.com also www.electrosensitivesociety.com and
the organization Care, see January 2011 in Environmental Science and
Technology, and www.communities.cana.com The information on microwaves
and EMFs affecting the heart is in the European Journal for Oncology, Library
Volume 5, October 2010. The lead author of Trent Universitys Magda Havas. For
medical professionals this article is a must and for people with existing heart
issues it is perhaps a life saver. In Canada, the expert testimony by professor
Magda Havas of Trent University, October 10, 2005, in a US court on the health
effects of EMF radiation is available on her website given below. This includes
information relevant to North America specically.
L. Blake, Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumers Guide to the Issues and How to
Protect Ourselves, iUniverse (updated 2007 edition)
Best source for relevant information www.microwavenews.com
To ght cell phone towers being placed near schools, playgrounds, hospitals,
etc. research www.whyfry.org and google cell phone towers + opposition
Planetary Association for Clean Energy Inc. Ottawa. Andrew Michrowski
provides excellent scientic sources and practical help: paceincnet@gmail.com
Contact Andrew Michrowski of Planetary Association for Clean Energy at
paceincnet@gmail.com for his PowerPoint presentations and scientic papers.
Most useful is his summary of all the literature, world-wide, up to the end of
2010, entitled Electro-Magnetic Fields: High Level Microtechnology Concerns.
It is the source of many items in this article including the degranulation of brain
cells, the damage to blood cells, the corrosive effect of microwaves on building
materials, etc.
Environmental Working Group at www.ewg.org tests cell phones etc for hazards,
safety, alternatives, etc where regulatory information is lacking, outdated, or
wrong. Check out their recommendations on safer cell phones.
Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a cardiologist of Co-Q
10
fame, has excellent information on
radiation on his excellent website www.heartmdinstitute.com
To take action against the WiFi plans for all of Torontos schools go to
www.safeschool.ca
To have your home/apartment assessed and made safe, or to build an EMF-safe
house, contact www.breathing-easy.net
For Graham/Stetzer lters www.stetzerelectric.com & www.DirtyElectricity.ca and
EMFSolutions 1-877-987-5185 or visit their booth at Total Health.
The legislation proposed in Maryland could be used in its identical wording in
Canada and proposed to Health Canada via our MPs. See
www.mainlegislature.org go to Summary of LD 1014.
Google the name Arthur Firstenberg and read his article in The Ecologist, volume
34, number 5, June 1, 2004, on the harm cell phone towers do to people and
animals. See his www.cellphonetaskforce.org for all things involving cell phones
and the latest on legal action internationally and legislative efforts in the USA.
On the dangers to food quality done by using microwave ovens google
microwave ovens + safety.
The Wikipedia entry on former WHO Director Gro Harlem Brundtland is pretty
informative and useful for the links it provides to her statements and interviews
involving harm, from cell phones.
On February 23, 2011, the Journal of the American Medical Association
published an article Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain
Glucose Metabolism which is exceedingly tame, until you get into the details
which support the worst ndings published internationally.
On building codes and EMF protection in architectural design, the Military
University in Germany etc., go to Robert Stellers website www.breathing-
easy.net
There are also a website specic to EMFs involving the issue of damage to trees,
other plants and animals: www.popsci.com or con tact
nukenet@energyjustice.net
The biological pathways shared by MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and EMF
sensitivity are discussed in detail in the material available by googling Dr. William
Rae, the American Academy for Environmental Medicine, and specically from
http://tis-hq.eh.doe.gov/chem-safety which is the web access to the U.S.
Department of Energy. The article there is by Lucinda Grant published in 1997
entitled Microwaves imitate pesticides.
EMFs and their harmful effects on the immune system of humans and animals is
comprehensively presented in a long articled by O. Johansson of the Karalinska
Institute in Sweden published in Pathophysiology in 2009. It can be downloaded
from the website of EarthCalm.
On Germany curtailing the use of CAT scans see Globe & Mail, April 3, 2009.
The European Unions report from the European Environmental Agency of
September 15, 2009 can be downloaded by googling them.
The advisory given by the UK Department of Health to text instead of put the cell
phone to your head was published widely; my source was The Telegraph, March
11, 2011. Go to www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/ martin-beckford
The report showing that smart meters are not safe and were not put through
the mandated regulatory hoops was published on February 18, 2011 by Sage
Associates of Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A/. and is entitled: Addendum:
Assessment of Radiofrequency Microwave Radiation Emissions from Silver
Spring OWS-NIC514 Model Wireless Electric Meter. Go to
www.stopsmartmeters.wordpress.com and/or omahoney@epri.com to get a
copy of the report and associated materials.
The May 2007 Canadian Human Rights Commission report (2 partsone on the
medical condition, the other on Canadas legal obligations) on MCS/EMF
sensitivity and relevant case law etc. can be downloaded by goggling its author
Margaret E. Sears or by going to the Human Rights Commission website and
searching for Environmental sensitivities Report 2007.
M. Anslow, The Gathering Brainstorm, The Ecologist, April 25, 2008
R. Baan et al. carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic elds, The
Lancet, vol. 12, issue 7, July 2011
BioInitiative Report 2007 (via google) The BioInitiative Report,
www.bioinitiative.org This is the most important international report on
everything concerning the hazards of EMF and related radiation issues
concerning peoples everyday use of such hazardous products. Its importance
also lies in its usefulness for legal action anywhere in the world. The BioInitiative
Working Group is an international group of scientists, researchers and public
health policy professionals They document serious scientic concerns about
current limits regulating how much EMF is allowable from power lines, cell
phones, and many other sources of EMF exposure in daily life. This is the best
and most reliable source of correct information that is not bent out of shape by
industry and government interests.
P. Brodeur, The Zapping of AmericaMicrowaves, their Deadly Risk and the
Cover-up, Norton, 1977
EM-Radiation Research Trust: Smart Meters-Smarter Practices: Solving Emerging
Problems: UK: Dr. I. Jamieson, 2008 www.radiationresearch.org
R. O. Becker MD & G. Selden, The Body Electric, Quill, 1985. This book
contains the basic research and clinical experiments conducted by this
orthopedic surgeon; his work is also the basis for current pulsated
electromagnetic eld therapy. The best book to start with to understand both
harmful as well as the potential and actual healing effects of electromagnetism.
R. O. Becker MD & A. A. Marino, Electromagnetism and Life, 1987 (out of print,
but available on amazon.com as Print on Demand copy or google for various
sources, one of them is www.biotele.com/EL/ELTOC.html)
Here Dr. Becker takes the reader through all the organs and systems of the
body and how electromagnetism effects their function and repair, and how they
are negatively affected by radiation. This book is key to understanding the
pathways of both harm and healing. For details on Dr. Beckers life and work as
well as his lifes work (bibliography available through PubMed) go to
www.microwavenews.com and www.earthpulse.net
Canada Report LTR-CS-98, April 1973: Environmental Pollution by Microwave
RadiationA Potential Threat to Human Health, by J.A. Tanner et al., Dept of
Anatomy, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario
Canadian Human Rights Commission, The Medical Perspectives of
Environmental Sensitivities, May 2007. Google. Canadian Human Rights
Commission, The Medical Perspectives of Environmental Sensitivities, May
2007, section on EMF and your legal right to accommodation.
www.chrc-ccdp.ca/legislation_policies and www.helkeferrie.com
Council of Europe April 11, 2011,full report to EU Parliament
http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc11/EDOC12608.pdf
T. Gutschi et al. Impact on cell phone use on mens semen parameters,
Andrologia, May 19, 2011
O. Hallberg & L. L. Morgan, The potential impact of mobile phone use on
trends in brain and CNS tumors, Neurology & Neurophysiology, S5-003, 2011,
Open Access Journal
L. Morgan, High frequency transitions on electrical wiring: A missing link in
increasing diabetes and asthma? presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the
American Academy of Environmental Medicine
Non-Thermal Effects and Mechanisms of Interaction Between Electromagnetic
Fields and Living MatterICEMS Monograph of the European Journal of
Oncology, Vol. 5, 2010 (via google)
Royal Society Report for Health Canada, 1999:
http://www.rsc.ca/les/publications/expert_panels/RF/RFreport-en.pdf
C.W. Smith & S. Best, Electromagnetic Man, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1989
A. Terpstra, Concerned Parents Protest as Telecom Invades Schools, Vitality,
October 2010
B. Trower, Secret Report on Cell Phone Dangers and TETRA (Report for Police
Federation of England and Wales), Nov. 25, 2004 (on www.Rense.com)
On uorescent lights of all kinds and ballast-equipped energy efcient light
bulbs http://www.hans.org/magazine/699/The-Dark-Side-of-Compact
Note: The various pendants, chips, bracelets and the like vary immensely in
their claims and effectivenessan effectiveness that is always limited. Again,
measurement is key. People who are EMF sensitive often nd that pendants can
help them get through situations like airports and ights, bus-rides etc. better
than without them. However, those pendantseven if they are moderately
effectivecannot substitute for the absolute requirement of avoidance from
constantly intensifying radiation injury. These injuries are outright burns and
they can only heal if no further burns take place coming from computers,
microwave ovens, and especially cell phones etc. etc. A cell phone can NOT to
my knowledge be made safe. Those alleged safety claims can be tested with the
body voltage meter and the Gauss Meter. Putting some sort of chip on a cell
phone and believe you are safe is absurd. The bottom line is this: there is NO
shield against EMF damage. There are helpful items that can diminish the effect
in the short run, and only if you arent already actually injured, but there is
nothing that will shield the human body from radiation. Reliance on such
gadgets can be harmful because the actual damage of such radiation is not taken
as seriously as it should.
EMF Solutions Canada (distributor of Graham Stetzer Filters): Kevin Byrne,
www.EMFSolutions .ca, call 1-877-987-5185, email: kbryne@emfsolutions.ca
Note: Some people nd they do not tolerate Graham/Stetzer lters because
the wiring in the house (which differs immensely between buildings and their
date of construction); faulty wiring can greatly increase the EM radiation around
those plugs for a distance of a couple of feet, but placing Graham-Stetzer plugs
into them will simultaneously stop the pulsation of the dirty electricity. If the
radiation itself is not reduced, the best thing would be to simply shut the power
off during the night instead of using those lters. It is also possible to have a
demand switch installed in the basement panel, which cuts the electrical
supply to those areas of the house at night that are sleeping areas, but does not
affect freezers etc. Demand switches work great but are expensive. Alternatively,
one can gure out which switches on the main panel supply electricity to the
bedrooms and shut just those off at night. With regard to the potential hazards
of dirty electricity lters read Black on White by Rigmor Garlund Lindt. The
bottom line is: you need proper measuring devices and understand your
specic needs.
Electrical services: shielded, non-radiating wiring, call Michael Lizotte 416-769-
3554, email: mlizotte410@rogers.com
Jaconello Health Center makes iMRS devices available to the public. Monthly
memberships, or 10/20 sessions, or purchase/rent. Call 416-463-2911
For details on coffee enemas, see Glutathione, the last item in Section 3
below. The scientic research on this therapy is in the bibliographies of C.
Gerson, Healing The Gerson Way, Gerson Health Media, 2010 and the books by
Dr. Nicolas Gonzalez, especially in One Man Alone listed on his website
(google).) To learn more about glutathione and magnesium I recommend the
summary by Dr. Mark Hyman on Hufngton Post www.hufngtonpost.com/dr-
hyman and the International Medical Veritas Society: www.remarkable-
recovery.com/article/00059.php .
The details of the World Health Organizations decision to classify human-made
EMF elds (cell phones, Smart Meters, baby monitors etc. etc) as Group 2B
carcinogens can be found by googling WHO + EMF + Group 2B; these include
lead, diesel fuel, pesticides, DDT and asbestos.
Andrew Goldsworthy Witness Statement April 2010 before Standing Committee
on Health in Ottawa. This is the most important document for any reader to
download. Goldsworthy is a biologist from the UK and summarizes in clear
language exactly what the problems are in Canada and what should be done.
This sworn presentation is key for legal and political action as well as accurate
information on all things EMF and health. His materials can be accessed through
goggling his name. Goldsworthy also has a one-page statement on WiFi and
schools from Nov 2011
Most of the damage done by digital telecommunications is not due to heating
but by the electrical effect their pulsating signals have on living tissues, which
occurs at much lower energy levels.
The human body can act as an antenna and the signals make electric currents
ow through it in time with the pulsations. It is this that does the bulk of the
damage by destabilizing the delicate membranes that surround each cell and
also divide it into internal compartment such as mitochondria (the energy
factories of the cell) and the lysosomes (the cells recycling factories).
All of these membranes are just two molecules thick and have a similar basic
structure. They are liquid crystals, made largely of negatively charged molecules
(which repel one another) stabilized by divalent positive ions (mostly calcium) that
sit in between them by mutual attraction and hold them together like mortar holds
together the bricks in a wall.
It was rst shown by Bawin et. al. in the 1970s that weak amplitude modulated
radio waves, where the strength of the signal rises and falls at low frequencies,
could remove some of this calcium from brain cell membranes. This destabilizes
them and make them more likely to leak. The low frequency pulsations of Wi-Fi
and mobile phone signals can be expected to behave in much the same way.
This is important in the brain because the normal function of brain cells
depends on the controlled passage of specic ions through their membranes.
When these membranes leak, ions ow through them in a relatively uncontrolled
way, which results in brain hyperactivity and may cause attention decit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in some people. When this occurs in the brain of
a fetus or very young child it prevents normal brain development, which may
result in autism (see http://mcs- america.org/june2011pg2345.pdf ) . Wi-Fi
should therefore be considered as an impediment rather than an aid to learning
and may be particularly hazardous for pregnant teachers.
Effects on the peripheral nervous system are equally damaging since
hyperactivity here causes false sensations such as pain, heat, cold, and pins and
needles in some people (i.e. symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity).
Hyperactivity in the cells of the inner ear can cause tinnitus and affect the sense
of balance causing dizziness and symptoms of motion sickness, including
nausea. Pupils showing any of these symptoms should be treated with sympathy
and the Wi-Fi switched off.
Many other effects on health can be attributed to membrane leakage, including
damage to DNA due to the release of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from
mitochondria, and digestive enzymes from lyosomes. Such DNA damage can
cause a loss of fertility and an increased risk of getting cancer.
Membrane leakage can also open the blood-brain barrier, leading to
Alzheimers disease and early dementia. There are similar barriers protecting all
of our body surfaces from foreign chemicals. Damage to these can cause or
exacerbate a variety of illnesses, including asthma, multiple allergies and
autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis. More on these, including
references, can be found at www.hese-project.org/hese-
uk/en/papers/cell_phone_and_cell.pdf
Fortunately, because of genetic variability, not everyone will suffer the same
symptoms and many may suffer none at all but, for the sake of those that do
suffer, Wi-Fi is not a good idea in schools or anywhere else for that matter.
The statement made by the Council of Europe on EMF issues is available
through www.next-up.org: News of the World 2011: Parliamentary Assembly:
The potential dangers of electromagnetic elds and their effect on the
environment, April 11, 2011.
Evidence that Electromagnetic Radiation is Genotoxic: The implications for the
epidemiology of cancer and cardiac, neurological and reproductive effects by
Dr. Neil Cherry June 2000 www.whale.to/b/cherry6.html
On the impact EMF technology is having on the safety of buildings and the re
hazard they present (especially Smart Meters) go to www.thermoguy.com who
presented to the BC government on March 7, 2012, a technical analysis of
these issues and the certainty of electromagnetically induced earthquakes and
the facts that have been ignored in Canadas Safety Code 6. This information is
useful for those who want to have Smart Meters removed. A comprehensive
report made for purposes of expert testimony presented to governments.
In order to have Smart Meters removed or shielded you can invoke the Human
Rights law of Canada on the basis of the above cited report. Through the MCS
Global Initiative organization you can obtain a draft letter and adapt it to your
needs, i.e. have your lawyer send it or your doctor if knowledgeable about this
matter. It is available upon request from Bonita Poulin at bpoulin@rogers.com
K. Crofton, Wireless Radiation Rescue, Global Wellbeing Books, 2010
B. B. Levitt, Electromagnetic FieldsA Consumers Guide, 2007,
www.Backinprint.com
C. Masur MD, Interaction between electromagnetic radiation and toxic metals,
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, January, 2012.
www.townsendletter.com Vitally important to anybody who has silver/mercury
amalgam tooth llings; they make you into a conductor and must be replaced to
protect your brain.
M. Milburn & M. Oeldermann, Electric Fields and Your Health, New Star, 1994
C. Ober, S. T. Sinatra MD, M. Zucker, Earthing, Basic Health, 2010. The concept
of grounding the body is not new, but the research presented here is useful in
every way. However, grounding devices can only be used if body voltage is
measured rst in the areas in which such devices are intended to be helpful.
Without objectively measured body-voltage measurements these things can
harm you. Therefore, read also the article by Virnich and Schauer cited below
and get a body voltage meter.
M. H. Virnich & M. Schauer, Caution: Grounding Pads and Sheets: Being
grounded is not equal to Zero-Field Exposure 2005 German article (google).
C. Thuile MD, Practice of Magnetic Field Therapy, 1999. The rst textbook on
this therapy. Call Marcel Wolfe 416-256-7981. A textbook on pulsated
electromagnetic eld therapy. Published in 1999 it was then already supported
by research consisting of more than 7,500 published articles of which more
than 1,000 are double-blind placebo-controlled studies. Written for the lay
person, it is an indispensable guide for those who need to heal from radiation
sickness.
J. P. Carmichael, Magnetic Resonance Stimulation, NAAM, 2009, the most
current textbook on clinical MRS studies (303-791-5705)
Following Dr. Thuiles book of 1999 here is the latest research, and especially
the clinical experience, of the last decade explained and presented with the
supporting literature.
J. B. Bassingthwaight et al, Fractal Physiology, Oxford, 1999. For those who want
to dig deeper, I suggest this book which provides the physics underlying the
PEMRS technology of and therapy. The clinical observations of people like Dr.
Becker are here further validated by the latest ndings in Chaos Theory and
Fractal geometry as they apply to human physiology.
B. J. West, Fractal Physiology and Chaos in Medicine, World Scientic, 2000.
The ndings of modern physics and bio-physics are here discussed with
reference to medicine and physiology. Useful for those with a science
background.
The British Medical Journal and the Journal of Epidemiology and Community
Health published in December 2010 the ndings of a study that tracked More
than 28,000 children as part of the Danish Birth Cohort study, as well as
another study tracking 100,000 mothers between 1996 and 2002. The results
of both studies found that more than 50% of children who were allowed to use
cell phones or whose mothers used them consistently had behavioral problems.
www.next-up.org/pdf/EMFs_and_changes_in_the_Complete_Blood_Count.pdf is a
good site to nd the sources and information on the changes in blood count
that exposure to articial EMFs causes in people and the damage that results
from this nding.
The reduction of human sperm count to the level of infertility in men using
laptop computers has been studied in various parts of the world. A source for
the latest research is www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(11)02678-
1/references
The report presented by the German medical associations urging immediate
action against EMF radiation in schools etc. is obtainable via google through the
name of the reports co-author and editor: Dr. Cornelia Waldmann-Selsam.
O. Johansson, Disturbance of the immune system by electromagnetic eldsA
potentially underlying cause for cellular damage and tissue repair reduction
which could lead to disease and impairment. Pathophysiology 2009 (google)
The Lancet Oncology, Volume 12, Issue 7, Pages 624626, July 2011
Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic elds. This mainstream
medical publication is of vital importance because it also carries legal weight
when taking action in your situation. This article contains information also about
Smart Meters. Its authors were involved in the WHO decision to declare EMFs a
carcinogen.
National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements: Medical Radiation
Exposure Of The U.S. Population Greatly Increased Since The Early 1980s,
March 5, 2009. Report number 160, Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the
Population of the United States, available for purchase at
www.ncrppublications.org That people are being subjected to far too much
medical radiation, such as CAT scans etc. has also been reported.
Egyptian researchers have studied the effect of EMF exposure on specic
hormones such as ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone relevant to many
illnesses), Cortisol (stress hormone, also relevant to inammation), Thyroid
Hormones (the key regulatory hormones of the body), Prolactin (in young
women; implicated in the development of breast cancer), Testosterone (in men,
important not only for healthy sperm but also for memory and other brain
functions).
Emad F. , et al. How does long term exposure to base stations and mobile
phones affect human hormone proles? Clinical Biochemistry, November 6,
2011
www.GreenMedInfo.com is an excellent website for information on prevention,
protection, treatments etc. especially for radiation-related issues. The entry on
computers damaging your eyes and what to do is especially helpful.
For EMF symptoms www.weepinitiative.org/talkingtoyourdoctor
Help make our schools safe www.safeschool.ca This website is especially
important because it is relevant to Canada and especially Ontario and contains a
wealth of resources if you want to join the effort to make our schools WiFi free.
www.iemfa.org site of the international alliance against EMF technology
Canadian initiatives taking place throughout the country www.weepinitiative.org
EMF Solutions Canada: Kevin Bryne: www.EMFSolutions.ca, call 1-877-987-
5185, kbryne@emfsolutions.ca In our house we placed Graham/Stetzer lters
everywhere and our computers, printers, TV, etc. are also connected through
such a powerbar. The dirty electricity reduction is measured with an appropriate
device.
www.earthing.com for grounding mats to be placed in your bed and/or under
your feet while working. CAUTION: see cautions in M. H. Virnich & M. Schauer
above. NOTE: these mats are only effective if you have bare feet; socks reduce
the effect to less than half, and shoes cancel it out completelythis can be
veried with a body voltage meter. The cotton grounding sheet contains thin
wires which you cannot feel and a cord that connects the sheet to the
grounding (round) portion of a nearby electric outlet. However, exposure must
be through bare legs or your naked body. If you wear pajamas as well as socks
to bed, forget it, as no grounding effect is measurable with a body voltage meter.
My husband and I sleep on this mat and have found it very helpful because it
improved sleep quality dramatically. Our bedroom has no electrical wires in the
ceilings, which is why are able to use this sheet.
www.dirtyelectricity.ca for Graham/Stetzer lters. New ones are in production
which may shield also against WiFi.
Robert Steller, a German-trained building biologist: EMF assessments, can help
remove or shield a Smart Meter, design a safe new house, or renovate yours
properly www.breathing-easy.net He trains electrical engineers and architects all
over the world.
www.safelivingtechnologies.ca body voltage and Gauss Meters: essential! You
cannot make your home and ofce environments safe from harmful EMF levels
without these two measuring devices. Buy them, borrow them, or get one of the
EMF experts (e.g. Kevin Bryne, Andrew Michrowski, Robert Steller) to do these
measurements for you. This assessment will also reveal whether your wiring is
coupling to water pipes, if telephone wires are coupling on to electrical wiring, if
underground wiring or water pipe problems exist, what shielding can be useful
in the way of special curtains and paint (such as U of T uses in some of its
buildings) and what wiring to change if necessary.
Shielded, non-radiating wiring for lamps, printers, computers etc. Michael Lizotte
416-769-3554 mlizotte419@rogers.com My husband and I rewired all our
lamps and replaced the cords for computers, printers etc. with these non-
radiating ones. We measured the radiation levels before and after with a Gauss
Meter.
Jaconello Health Center is making the iMRS device available to the public.
Monthly memberships, or 10/20 sessions, or purchase/rent. Call 416-463-
2911
A turbo stick-equivalent, called a hub, that can be placed outside the window
or even inside your room, so you dont get radiated at your desk; this enable
you to hook up more than one computer:
www.bell.ca/Mobility/Products/NETGEAR_MBR1210_Turbo_Hub
www.irda.org links to the Infrared Data Association which promotes infrared
communication technology www.siemens.com/innovation/en/news/2010/500-
megabits-second-with-white-led-light.htm they have proven that something
other than wi is viable as well as radiation free.
Cell phones and children www.saferphonezone.com and
www.citizensforsafetechnology.org
Update Spring 2013
Visit paceincnet@gmail.com for new information on EMF radiation
from hybrid cars.
SECTI ON 3
CANCERTHE WAR ON CANCER
The War on Cancer: Anatomy of Failure
by Guy B. Faguet, Springer, 2005.
Reviewed by Helke Ferrie, Vitality Magazine, May 2005
Books that discuss the well-know and near-total failure of standard
cut-burn-and-poison cancer treatments of orthodox medicine are not
rare; but they are usually written by people who opted out of the
Cancer Establishment. What makes this book jaw-droppingly
astounding is the fact that it comes from a member of that
Establishment. This book goes way beyond polite doubt expressed
with caution. It even goes beyond heresy. It is a total condemnation.
The author is an expert in leukemia whose research over the past
30 years was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the
Department of Veteran Affairs, the National Cancer Institute
and the National Science Foundation. He produced 140 peer-reviewed
articles in science journals, 7 book chapters and two books on cancer.
(This is not somebody who is interested in vitamins.) For years he hes-
itated to put his thoughts on paper, but nally proceeded when the
director of that bastion of standard cancer research, the Sloan-
Kettering Institute, (of all people!) insisted that he publish this book.
This director is none other than Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, one
of the most famous cancer researchers in the world and until recent-
ly director of the National Institutes of Health.
What this book tells us is this: the party is over. Of course, after
Copernicus proved that the sun, not the earth, occupies the centre of
our solar system, it was not generally accepted until four hundred
years later at the end of the 19th century. So, dont hold your breath
while waiting for change in your nearby cancer hospitalbut it is
inevitable.
Readers who want a truthful (and hair-raising) history of cancer
research, chemotherapy, and the politics of cancer will not be disap-
pointed. Faguet lets it all hang out and will satisfy even the most dis-
illusioned among us. He has a quote at the beginning of the book by
Jean Rostand: What is surprising is the numbers of qualications
of those gone astray. They were not half-wits, fools, or friends of the
wondrous. No, they were true men of science That is how Faguet
views the Cancer Establishment as a member of which he passed his
own entire professional life.
Faguet argues that the fundamental error on which the bulk of
cancer research is based came from 19th century bacteriology due to
which researchers view cancer as being caused by an invader which
makes cells go bad. The result: the illusion of the cell-kill therapies
designed to stop uncontrolled cell proliferation. Once genetics dis-
covered the oncogenes which can be switched on by carcinogens and
then proceed systematically to assist in cancer growth, Faguet argues,
it should have been clear that cancer is not a localized disease of
nasty cells gone mad, but a systemic condition that could be prevent-
ed. This bacteriological misconception, he argues, produced the drug
industry with its ever more toxic drugs designed to kill those bad cells,
but none of those offer anything better than a maximum 5-year sur-
vival rate.
Faguet is especially appalled at the very denition of oncological
success which is based on the totally false and tragically misleading
measure of tumor reduction. Millions of tumors have been and are
reduced by horric drugs, radiation and surgery, and just about
everybody with those reduced tumors died and still dies: a mere 2% of
all cancers are cured and cancer incidence has risen every year by
1.5% since the 1950s. No wonder, the chapters devoted to cancer sta-
tistics is the stuff of nightmares. Here is everything you ever wished
you didnt have to know about cancer in numbers, graphs, and tables
presented with clear explanationsand all straight from the horses
mouth: the publications of the Cancer Establishment.
Faguet considers the last 50 years of drug discovery a waste of time
and money at best, and a delusional enterprise providing empty hope
to millions of patients at worst. Clinical trials are explained in ways
that really scare the hell out of one: Faguet tells the reader they are
merely toxicity tests on large numbers of humans. He describes,
with all the veriable sources to satisfy nitpickers, the failure of
chemotherapy, the unreliability of cancer tests such as the PSA and
mammography, the hit-and-miss (mostly miss says he) method of
drug discovery, and the shocking monetary incentives built into this
system that keep it going, regardless of the near total lack of results.
Oncologists in the US make approximately $1 million a year from the
perfectly legal kickbacks from chemotherapy drugs administered
in their offices. Of the 70,000 chemical compounds tested for poten-
tial usefulness between 19901998 only 10 were worth exploring fur-
ther, and most of those went by the wayside too. A multi-national 20-
year assessment involving 500,000 women taking mammograms
regularly showed no benet whatsoever, but the American Cancer
Society recommends mammography nonetheless.
And so, as cancer incidence and mortality increased since the war
on cancer was declared in 1971 by then President Nixon, the
National Cancer Institute grew ever fatter and now has a budget of $
171.6 billion and supports at any given time some 7,000 investiga-
tions in more than 1,000 institutions.
Faguet is at his best when presenting one nasty truth after anoth-
er. He is disappointing when suggesting solutions. He does make the
obvious point that we absolutely must stop saturating the environ-
ment with cancer-causing substances, but then proceeds to pin his
hopes on genetics and pharmacogenomics which he believes will
nd the aberrant molecular genetic pathways of cancer and inter-
vene at that level.
What Faguet doesnt knowhaving spent all his life in the Cancer
Establishment clubis that this technique already exists and has a
SECTION 3: The War On Cancer 191
documented real cure rate of more than 40%; it even cures pancreat-
ic cancer. Its known as nutritional medicine, or the Gerson Therapy.
Therapeutic doses of nutrients combined with detoxication restores
those molecular genetic pathways perfectly, predictably, and measura-
bly. The dream of standard oncology is daily reality with this therapy.
Faguet has started the destruction of that web of myths, self-serv-
ing illusions, and outright lies in cancer research and therapy; this is
a truly great achievement. It looks also as if this book is not an isolat-
ed bombshell: at the same time that it came out, the journal of the
National Institutes of Health (Sept. 20, 2005) announced that vitamin
C actually selectively kills cancer cellswhat chemotherapy hoped
to achieve in vain. Let us hope that a truly evidence-based era of
cancer research and therapy has begun at last.
Forced Medicine
Sarahs Last Wish: A Chilling Glimpse into Forced Medicine,
by Eve Hillary www.sarahs-last-wish.com, 2010
October 2011
The Australian environmental health activist, Eve Hillary, has written
a book thats become a bestseller in her country and, thereby, started
a process of reform and awareness in Australia about the abomina-
tion of forced medical care and the human right to freedom of choice.
This book is so well written and so exhaustively documentedboth
legally and scienticallythat its hard to put down. It is also such a
terrible a story that I kept wishing it was not true. But it is.
Eleven year old Sarah suddenly developed a painful lump in 2002
which was misdiagnosed as being pregnant, even though she was
pre-pubertal. It turned out to be a rare form of ovarian cancerand
it became of great scientic interest to the oncological community
there. Once she became the focus of an unusual scientic research sit-
uation, the humanity of the patient had disappeared, and the sci-
enceworking supposedly for the greater good and an elusive future
took over completely.
Even though an ectopic pregnancy is a serious medical emer-
gency and should have been treated as such, Sarah was instead rst
put through extreme humiliation to prove she had not had sex. The
idea was not that maybe she had been raped or assaulted in some
wayno, she was accused of hiding her own desired sexual activity.
The lump continued to cause her incredible pain, and eventually the
cancer was diagnosed and treated with surgery and aggressive
chemotherapyagainst her own clearly expressed and then still
legally supported wishes. Sarah, after being told she had ovarian can-
cer, refused chemotherapy, having understood the fact that the
chance of recovery was basically nil. Then, regardless of the medical
facts, the known prognosis, and the patients own expressed wishes,
the state took custody away from the parents (by court order) and
forced the child to take the chemotherapy treatments for almost two
years. (Parallel events of this type have taken place recently in the US
in order to prevent children with brain cancerinoperable by deni-
tionto be treated by Dr. Stanislav Burzynski. See the award-winning
2011 documentary Burzynski, available from www.burzynski-
movie.com. )
Sarah and her parents sought relief for her improperly treated
pain with the author, Eve Hillary, who runs an integrative medical
clinic, and so Hillary, too, came under attack from the Australian
authorities and suffered severe nancial and personal losses as a con-
sequence.
Sarahs case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court of
Australia by the Australian Department of Community Services in
order to get the power to enforce conventional treatment against
Sarahs will. Sarahs family lost the case, and so the chemotherapy
continued. Subsequent investigations revealed that the oncologists
and childcare services had withheld key evidence in court, outright
falsied information, even lied under oath, and the process nearly
bankrupted Sarahs parents because even their own lawyer was not
willing to stand up to the juggernaut of the state and the medical
community combined, once the evidence was thus polluted.
When Sarah lay dying in 2004, she made her father promise that
he would do everything he could to ensure that no other kid would
have to endure what she had suffered. Hence the books title.
Is this story a freakish exception? Not at all. Freedom of choice in
healthcare has become one of the most important human rights
issues of our time. Modern medicine is fueled by an engine designed
to churn out ever higher prots in the wake of dazzling research red
up by ludicrous claims, while patients are more often than not mere-
ly the fuel for that engine. In cancer therapy especially, the cut-burn-
poison paradigm is still the central dogma. And being a dogma it
does not and cannot serve living people, but a protable ideology.
Children with cancer will nd themselves in the care of the state
just as easily here as in Australia, if parents dont toe the line of the
oncological cabal.
While reading this horric story, I realized how lucky my husband
and I were in escaping such an experience in the 1980s. We had
adopted a girl who had a rare form of aplastic anemia, a condition
in which production of both red and white blood cells break down
completely and the patient requires transfusions every 34 weeks. She
had acquired this condition as a result of sustained DDT exposure in
India starting at birth as her parents worked in fruit orchards in Goa.
She was brought to our attention when her parents relinquished her
to an orphanage, being unable to care for her by the time she was 4
years old because of her need of monthly transfusions, something
beyond their ability to obtain or pay for.
The hematologist at Sick Childrens Hospital committed us to
making our daughter available for researchalive and dead. She,
too, was a highly unusual case, and we were at that time still staunch
believers in serving the putative great promise of research and the
future of medicine. She surprised everyone because she lived to be
almost 16 years old, even though the maximum life expectancy for
such cases (very few reported in the literature) is 12 years. I believe
she lived longer and well because of the enormous daily amounts of
vitamin C she received, after had I read Linus Pauling, and because
of an almost totally junk-free diet; I cooked from scratch even back in
the 1970s.
Ultimately, we did not have to honour our contract with the hema-
tologist because he died a year before she didof leukemia, most like-
ly caused by the toxic drugs that his work required him to handle.
Our daughters pediatrician went along with her every wish right to
the end, including her nal refusal to have blood transfusions and die
in peace, once she knew her liver had begun to fail. She knew exact-
ly what was going on and was able to discuss her case with her doc-
tors like a professional. When her liver was dying she called it quits
absolutely knowing what she was doing to the point of planning all
the activities of her last three days in detail and her funeral with me
on the last day.
Why put yourself through reading this terrible book? First, because
Sarah wants to speak to you. Second, because such wrongdoing must
be made public in order to shed light on a corrupt system that choos-
es prot over positive patient outcomes. Third, because we must unite
in regaining our right to treat our illnesses and sustain our health
according to our own understanding; to achieve this right it is vitally
important that we help ourselves and others to lose whatever illusions
we may still have about the infallibility of our modern medical sys-
tem, the often absurd promises of research, and use our collective
voices to bring the true humanity back to healthcare. Finally, it is of
key importance to treat the inevitability of death with respect and
decency. Death is never the enemy, the lack of humanity is.
AsbestosCanadas Politics Of Death
March 2009
No man is an island any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.
John Donne 15721631
The lesson the current meltdown of the global economy teaches is
that it is bad business and not career-enhancing to kill customers,
deceive voters, maltreat employees and take our planet for granted.
When human activities are focused on prots and power they
inevitably careen off into a deadly abyss, taking millions along.
British journalist Jeremy Seabrook wrote back in 1988, before moral-
ly-challenged governments brought the world economy to the brink
of destruction: If the creation of wealth itself destroys and wastes
humanity, that wealth, however vast, will never sufce to repair the
ravages it has wrought.
What that looks like in real time and real life, I witnessed person-
ally on a daily basis over the last three months. Jim Murray
(19422009), one of my most cherished friends, died on February 16,
having spent those last months in our house where my husband, a
doctor, and I helped Jims wife with the arduous task of nursing him,
a malignant mesothelioma patient. This cancer, possibly the fastest
and most deadly known, is caused exclusively by exposure to asbestos.
Jim was a shaman disguised as an alternative energy engineer
who installed solar and wind sourced systems. He lived off the electri-
cal grid for more than thirty years, yet his house was full of all the lat-
est gadgets imaginable. Every new one sent him into ecstasy. He had
concert pianist-level musical training, worked for years with troubled
teenagers, and helped bring organic farming to remote Manitoulin
Island. In his twenties he had left Toronto, barely knowing how to
handle a hammer and saw, to build in the wilderness of Manitoulin
a symmetrical nine-sided house which incorporated ancient Greek
mathematical mysticism known as the Golden Ratio (or phi) found in
all their ancient temples. Known also as the Fibonancci series, popu-
larized recently by Dan Browns thriller The Davinci Code, it is found
in the structure of sea shells, astronomical phenomena, and evolving
living things. The grand unity of nature and spirit deeply fascinated
and sustained him. Jim was one of those rare people who always
made one feel emotionally replenished.
Underneath his wild and crazy enthusiasms (religion, genetics,
cars, food, Susm, Gurdjiffs philosophy, movies, the criminality of
politics, the environmenthe was carefully informed on all, and he
asked no end of questions when he wasnt) was a meditative calm
that was felt as warm and accepting energy. His wisdom, wit and
humor brought people together and created ever-widening circles of
friends. As a teenager and again in the 1980s during temporary jobs,
he was exposed to asbestos, mixing it with his bare hands, never
knowing anything about its dangers. A quarter century later this
killed him.
According to the World Health Organization, about 100,000 die
every year from asbestos related cancer. Due to its characteristically
long latency period (as much as 30 years after the initial exposure) its
incidence is increasing exponentially, having more than doubled in
Canada in 20 years, as people, exposed in the 70s and 80s before
asbestos use decreased, are now diagnosed. Class action suits against
asbestos mines and manufacturers in the US and Europe involve mil-
lions of victims or their families, also in increasing numbers.
Standard medicine has no treatment whatsoevereven the usual
cut, burn, and poison therapies (surgery, radiation, chemo drugs) are
no longer suggested. The best of the alternative therapies, mostly
those protocols developed by the Gerson Institute and Dr. Nicolas
Gonzales, which have proven successful even in ovarian and pancre-
atic cancers, rarely succeed with mesothelioma patients; they do occa-
sionally, if diagnosis was early enough.
Everybody agrees that asbestos is a perfect carcinogen, meaning
it promotes cancer and causes specically mesothelioma, a cancer of
the pleural sheath between the lungs and the rib cage which tends to
spread into the abdomen and the heart. Who is everybody?
Mesothelioma, and specically asbestos, have made bedfellows of the
World Health Organization, all the medical associations and medical
schools of the world, the International Agency for Research on
Cancer, the labor unions of the world, all cancer societies, the
European Union, Australia, various non-governmental organizations
of all sizes, even Codex does not approve of itand the World Trade
Organization! And whats more, they also all agree that the only way
to stop this cancer is to stop the mining of asbestostotallyand to
stop all activities that use asbestos.
All that consensus notwithstanding, our Prime Minister, Stephen
Harper, begs to differ. Whatever his reasons may be, the fact is that he
managed to scuttle the Rotterdam Convention on the worlds most
hazardous substances in October of last year in order to protect
Canadas asbestos mines, specically Thetford Mines, located in
Asbestos, Quebec. My friend Jim was diagnosed with mesothelioma
on the same day, October 27.
Harper insists on protecting some 700 jobs of an already increas-
ingly failing industry which still brings revenues of $ 112 million a
year (while also killing plenty of Canadian miners) from exports to 80
third world countrieswhom Harper wishes to remain clueless as to
the dangers involved. Simultaneously, Canadian taxpayers are foot-
ing the bill, to the tune of millions, to have all the asbestos removed
from the parliament buildings. But its OK to export death; its OK to
have some Canadians eventually get mesothelioma; its OK to stop the
process of banning toxic substances world wide; but it is not OK to
expose our MPs to asbestosof course not, but why anybody else?
There is yet another twist: Public Works Minister Christian Paradis,
came originally from those Thetford asbestos mines and was the pres-
ident of Canadas Asbestos Chamber of Commerce; and Indian
Affairs Minister, Chuck Strahl, is currently dying from mesothelioma
(Macleans.ca, October 27, 08).
To be fair, Harper is just continuing, albeit with erce vigor, the
asbestos policies of the previous Liberal and Conservative govern-
ments. In 1997 the increasing international consensus began to upset
Canada when France banned asbestos. Canada went to the WTO
court in 1999, which to everyones surprise agreed with France. The
EU followed Frances example and banned asbestos; so, Canada went
back to the WTO and appealed again. Again, the WTO conrmed
that the use and trading of asbestos was legally indefensible, even by
the murky WTO standards. Undeterred, in 2001 Canada tried to
appeal again, and lost again. When South Africa banned asbestos
shortly thereafter, Canada threatened to go to the WTO court once
again, but South Africa told Canada (in essence) to jump into one of
our great lakes. Canada, meanwhile succeeded in stopping Thailand
and some other countries from putting the internationally recognized
skull-and-crossbones sign on the bags carrying Canadian asbestos, to
ensure workers handling them would not be unduly alarmed.
In 2008 Health Canada, under the chairmanship of Trevor Ogden,
the editor-in-chief of the Annals of Industrial Hygiene, produced a
report on asbestos for the Prime Minister which he didnt like, so he
kept it under wraps, and continued to pour several more million dol-
lars of taxpayers money into the national asbestos cheerleader, the
Chrysotile Institute, whose leading scientists have on several occa-
sions been exposed internationally as frauds, and whose business it is
to literally sell asbestos to the Third World. Those propaganda efforts
cost about $ 50 million by now (see CMAJ articles.).
The Canadian Medical Association, in an editorial published in
the CMAJ, October 21, 2008, expressed outrage over the fact that
Canada has led a ferocious diplomatic opposition to the Rotterdam
Convention which would have made a mere courtesy warning
mandatory. Canadas opposition to this regime of politeness was
supported only by Iran, Russia and Zimbabwe, countries whose
governments give one the creepsas our own government now
does for me.
For Canada to export asbestos to poor countries that lack the
capacity to use it safely is inexplicable, the CMAJ thundered, but to
descend several steps further to suppress the results of an expert
[Health Canada] committee, pour millions of dollars into an institute
that shills for the industry, and oppose the Rotterdam Conventions
simple rule of politeness is inexcusable. Canadas government seems
to have calculated that it is better for the countrys asbestos industry
to do business under the radar like arms traders, regardless of the
deadly consequences. What clearer indication could there be that the
government knows what it is doing is shameful and wrong? Canadas
government must put an end to this death-dealing charade.
The medical profession is still ghting to protect Canadians and
the rest of the world from our asbestos. On January 23 of this year, the
faculty of medicine of Laval University wrote to Harper, giving him a
piece of their joined scientic minds that can scare anybody
because these guys really know what they are talking about. (See the
BAC website.)
When the World Trade Organization comes to the cancer patients
defense, the world is turning into a new direction. Joel Bakan in his
now classic book and documentary lm, The Corporation, explored
the psychopathology of the corporate pursuit of prot and power,
showing how prot-focused conscience-neutral behavior displays all
the classic signs and symptoms of a psychopath. However, anybody,
our MPs included, sitting at the bedside of a mesothelioma patient
would nd it a wrenching experience. But then, how many ever have
to do just that?
In contemplating Canadas asbestos policy I was reminded of the
experiments by Stanley Milgram of Harvard University in the 1960s.
They proved that most people will do terribly harmful things when
given orders to do so. He also showed that when a person cannot see,
hear, or touch the person they are harming knowingly, he or she will
even killing the victim. However, when in direct contact with their
designated victims, most could not harm them. Morality is inextri-
cably tied to human proximity, a researcher studying these experi-
ments observed, pointing out that personal images will override
obedience to abstract categories.
Milgram designed these experiments following the Nuremberg
war crimes trials when learning that the plan to exterminate the Jews
in Germany had begun with orders given to Nazi SS ofcers to round
up and kill entire families in a systematic way, which very quickly
failed. They wouldnt do it when confronted with those families. Hitler
changed the plan such that those who gave the extermination orders
were totally removed from the reality of their actions; often even those
who herded their victims into the gas chambers were themselves deceived
at rst and did not know that they were actually killing these people.
I suggest that governments which allow themselves to become the
tools of the corporate tendency to psychopathy, which itself is the
result of their own vast structural impersonality described by Joel
Bakan, are falling into the pattern of behavior Milgram showed is
latent in almost everybody.
World consensus on the carcinogenicity of asbestos seems not to
deter policies that continue to ruin the lives of millionswho are all
conveniently out of sight. There is a secret medicine given only to
those who hurt so hard, they cant hope wrote the great Arabic poet
Rumi (12071273). I believe that secret medicine is individual moral
determination, which in the long run worksunlike mere hope.
Governments can be compelled to act morally only through wide
awake moral citizens and voters. We must relentlessly go after our
MPs and tell them what we want and what they must absolutely stop
doing. Harpers policies have the support of less than one third of
Canadians, most of whom probably dont even know about this
asbestos crime. None of us would personally hand a bag of asbestos
to a construction worker in India and tell him its quite OK to work
with it day after day.
US president Barak Obama said in Ottawa on February 19, that
since NAFTA has various labor provisions and environmental provi-
sions as side agreements, it strikes me that if those side agreements
mean anything, they might as well be incorporated into the main
body of the agreement, so that they can be effectively enforced I
think it is important, whether were talking about our relationships
with Canada or our relationships with Mexico, that all countries con-
cerned are thinking about how workers are being treated and all
countries concerned are thinking about environmental issues
Good heavens! Maybe the Golden Rule is going to resurface in
some of those power-crazed brains in Ottawa and they will recall
the truth that was forgotten during the years of free market excess
[that] economics and markets exist not for their own sake, but in
order to promote the fullest possible development of the human per-
son. (Elliott & Atkinson, 2008).
I
Go to Ban Asbestos Canada (BAC) www.bacanada.org, sign their petition, inform
yourselves, click on the link that sends a letter to the Prime Ministerand get all
your family members and friends to do the same. Read the World Call of
Conscience to Prime Minister Harper signed by hundreds of scientists from all
over the world. Check out the Canadian Environmental Law Associations work
against asbestos: www.cela.ca.
Google links to many law rms specializing in asbestos. Miskins work started in
1979 and also represents victims of the anti-inammatory drug Vioxx that
caused Wyeth to be bought up by Pzer this year. Free information on eligibility:
miskinlaw@aol.com, 416-492-0989 or 1-877-428-8000 www.adrworks.com
L. Armstrong et al. Cancer101 Solutions To A Preventable Epidemic, New
Society Publishers, 2007
J. Bakan. The CorporationThe Pathological Pursuit of Prot and Power, Viking
2004
Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ): free on-line. See October 21,
2008, vol. 179 (9)
L. Elliott & D. Atkinson. The Gods That FailedHow Blind Faith in Markets Has
Cost Us Our Future, Nation Books, 2009
C. Gerson. Healing The Gerson Way, Totality, 2007
P. Kraus. Surviving Mesothelioma and Other CancersA Patients Guide, 2005,
via www.cancermonthly.com
D. Michaels. Doubt Is Their ProductHow Industrys Assault on Science
Threatens Your Health, Oxford, 2008
J.R. OConnor. They said months. I chose years! A Mesothelioma Survivors
Story, 2008, via www.cancermonthly.com
K. Ruff. Exporting HarmHow Canada Markets Asbestos to the Developing
World, October 2008. Free download www.rideauinstitute.ca
D. J. Savoie. Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada
and the United Kingdom, UTP, 2008
J. Stanford. Economics for EveryoneA Short Guide to the Economics of
Capitalism, Fernwood, 2008
G. Tweedale & J. McColloch. Defending the IndefensibleThe Global Asbestos
Industry and its Fight for Survival, Oxford, 2008
Update Spring 2013
The asbestos industry nally came to an end in Canada in the fall of
2012 when Quebec elected Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois as
premier. See the excellent article on this shameful episode in
Canadian mining history in thestar.com, September 22, 2012: The
belated demise of Canadas asbestos industry by Kathleen Rufn.
She is the human rights adviser to the Rideau Institute and the author
of Exporting Harm: How Canada Markets Asbestos in the Developing
World. In the meantime, the asbestos mines are about to serve as a
stand-in for a movie on Mars (Canadian Press, Nov. 25, 2012).
An article in The Lancet, February 2, 2013, reports on the possible
capture of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) by
the asbestos industry, specically by the one remaining source,
Russia.
For details go to vol. 381 issue 9864 page 359f; open access article
www.thelancet.com.
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and His Clinical Trial
November 2010
if you are an honest scientist, it doesnt matter if its moon dustif
its working, you have got to follow through I also believe that truth
always comes to the top I have done what
I have done because of the truth of it, and the truth has proven
to be only truer as Ive gotten further into this quest,
and the results have been my greatest joy. We have found the
fundamental way in which nature works with cancer, and its extraordi-
nary. It is the greatest reward I could ever ask for.
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez
The keynote speaker at the 2010 Whole Life Expo is Dr. Nicholas
Gonzalez of New York, one of a small number of doctors who succeed
with cancer beyond the wildest dreams of establishment oncology
and thereby put the lie to the pharmaceutical hype that fuels a can-
cer industry ringing in at hundreds of billions of dollars, while fool-
ing millions of desperate and bewildered patients. Ive been told
drug companies know about my work but hope I get hit by a bus he
observes wryly.
Examining evidence in the light of ones own understanding,
rather than accepting other peoples interpretations, and then depart-
ing from established norms somehow always winds up as an ordeal
by reat the stake in past centuries, or in trials by regulatory bod-
ies who know how to torture and cripple in contemporary ways.
Orthodoxy of any stripe never is what it pretends to be, but consti-
tutes a rigorous system designed to protect revenues, power, and egos,
and thus serves an elaborate structure which enjoys the comfort of
opinion and defends in every way possible against the discomfort
of thought, as John F. Kennedy put it.
Yet, every orthodoxy is cracked by some heretic arising within that
system, in this case decorated with academic honors galore, such as
Dr. Gonzalez, an immunologist and medical doctor, who received his
degrees from Columbia and Cornell universities. His mentor was
none other that Dr. Robert Good, a world-famous oncologist and the
then director of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr.
Good encouraged him to examine the cancer treatment developed by
a maverick dentist, Donald Kelley. Having cured himself of pancreat-
ic cancer, just about the deadliest one there is, Kelley developed a pro-
tocol based on the earlier work by Dr. Max Gerson and the discovery
made in the early 1900s by John Beard of Edinburgh University about
the central importance of pancreatic enzymes for cancer prevention
and treatment.
Starting in 1981, Dr. Gonzalez systematically studied 10,000 can-
cer cases from Dr. Kelleys les, but the book Gonzalez wrote on this
project, One Man Alone, in 1987 was stonewalled by all publishers: it
became available nally this year, and you can buy it at the EXPO.
Kelley was hounded throughout his life by the establishment, impris-
oned, and bankrupted. Similarly, Dr. Gonzalez was put through vari-
ous disciplinary trials and punishments, also in an effort to stop the
heresy of curing cancer with enzyme therapy, nutrition, and detoxi-
cation protocols. When the US National Institutes of Health and the
American government and various cancer organizations found them-
selves unable to stop Dr. Gonzalez success with cancer patients, they
tried to mess with his clinical trials insteada horrendous story, now
in press, and reviewed in Vitalitys October issue. Unlike the tragic
Kelley, Dr. Gonzalez is prevailing.
At the heart of the battle are two opposing views on cancer.
Orthodoxy sees the cancer patient as a battleeld and embarks on
what Dr. Julian Whitaker describes, in Suzanne Somers absolutely
superb book, Knockout, as a search-and destroy mission to purge the
body of cancer cells nd a tumor, cut it out, poison it with
chemotherapy, or obliterate it with radiation; the result of this
approach has been that for the past half century the death rate for
cancer has not budged. All wars are extremely lucrative for the
weapons industry and very bad for the health of those on the receiving
end of that industrys products.
The opposing view, Dr. Gonzalez told Somers, is that tumors are
not the illness, but rather the bodys way to sequester waste material
the tumor has a purpose [it is] a sign that the body is too lled
with toxins, and these can overwhelm the livers ability to process
them, [then] confronting the body with an enormous load of toxic
waste that produces tumors which are like accessory livers , name-
ly additional, desperately and hastily constructed toxic waste dumps.
For Drs. Beard, Gerson, Kelley, Gonzalez and other past and con-
temporary heretical cancer doctors, the body is not a battleeld, but
rather an exquisitely constructed living entity capable of perfect self-
repair. It requires biologically appropriate and bio-friendly assistance
in order to do its inherent repair process in all those ways it knows
better than any doctor could ever hope to understand. This sort of
therapeutic dialogue with the cancer, and a body known to be capa-
ble of self-repair, is fundamentally nurturing; it also does not gener-
ate obscene wealth for any body of professionals, nor for any kind of
industry, arms or drugs.
Howard Straus, Dr. Max Gersons grandson working at the Gerson
Institute, and Dr. Gonzalez observed in a recent as yet unpublished
paper: The human body is made up of about 100 trillion cells All
cells in the body are replaced at least once every year and a half.
Many structures (such as the liver or the lining of the intestines) are
replaced in days or weeks. When the organs are replaced, they are
replaced with healthy, new cells. This replacement and repair process
generates 180 billion cells per day and also, simultaneously removes
exactly as many dead cells every day in a perfect 1:1 ratio, or any
one organ would decrease or increase in size and create unimagin-
able problems. Toxins interfere with this process and without proper
nutrients their work is stopped. Then the immune system cannot work
properly either. There is no need to stimulate the immune system,
as many [pharmaceutical] immune therapies today attempt to do;
the immune system is designed and optimized to repair any dysfunc-
tion on its own Once the proper support is supplied to the immune
system, it awakens and acts with a speed and power that can only be
termed awesome to behold.
This perfectly balanced process of health maintenance can only
function properly if our bodies receive healthy (bio-identical) fuel,
otherwise cancer may begin. Everything in our bodies comes from
one place: our diets, states Dr. Gonzalez. Nutrition is key. Its the
foundation. Its not the end, its the beginning. Its the ultimate foun-
dation for good health. If you dont have that, nothing else is going
to work. But, he continues, the fact is that we treat our cars better
than we treat our bodies. No one would think about putting the
wrong fuel into their expensive car, but [people] go and put the
biggest pile of junk into their mouths and are shocked to nd that
their cancer diagnosis stems from the garbage the food industry
serves up. Indeed, so much of what we eatoften unknowinglyis
outright carcinogenic. Back in the late 19th century Sir William Osler
already observed that we dig our graves with our knives and forks.
If indeed it is so simple to cure cancer and prevent it by remov-
ing the garbage and providing healing nutrients, instead of bom-
barding the body with even more toxic substances (imagined to be
the appropriate weapons of cellular mass destruction), it would put
an end to all the marches and research dollars, and most of all to a
big huge chemotherapy business [of] $ 200 billion a year, observes
Suzanne Somers. Well, the proof is in that it is that simpleand that
complex, and certainly possible.
The underlying complexity of nurturing protocols is startling in its
effect. Any one biological substance affects multiple targets at once,
and all of them interact with each other. The notion of sending one
synthetic chemicalname any cancer drug on the marketinto a
system in which trillions of intelligent cells communicate simultane-
ously with each other, and expecting to hit a target imagined to be
the enemy, like some sort of smart bomb, is so silly as to leave one
speechless. In war, smart bombs always have collateral damage
information usually suppressed to the preserve political spin of the
day. In cancer therapy, devastating side effects to such smart drugs
are equally downplayed to preserve prots. As a member of the can-
cer establishment, said to Suzanne Somers: The truth is, we dont
want to nd a cure for cancer. Its too big a business.
Once a lie begins to become apparent and doubt arises, more and
more people begin to think in different and new ways, too. On a daily
basis the internet-based medical research websites report on how very
wrong the cancer establishment in fact is on just about everything
once considered unquestionable. A decade ago, the American Cancer
Society absolutely denied that nutrition has anything at all to do with
cancer prevention or could be useful in treatment. However, the
Presidents Cancer Panel Report this year stated exactly the opposite.
Indeed, now basic research scientists are even identifying the natural
chemicals found in specic foods that help the body prevent cancer,
such as are found in broccoli and similar plants. We learn now, that
exposure to toxic environmental chemicals, once denied as even
existing, can program the body for cancer decades later; the timing
process of these evolving time bombs is beginning to be understood
also. The newly initiated Cancer Genome Project, designed to exam-
ine a great many different cancers, will undoubtedly provide infor-
mation on why the work of Dr. Gonzalez and his past and present col-
leagues are workingafter all we knew that sunshine and cod liver
oil prevented and cured rickets long before we knew why and how.
As for the battleeld approach to cancer patients bodies, it is grat-
ifying to see how the establishment must time and again acknowl-
edge that their weapons usually injure, and do not nurture or protect.
The reports are in on how pharmaceutical drugs which are intended
to treat symptoms of diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and
more, go on to cause cancer. Only a couple of years ago anyone, like
myself, asserting that mammograms and CAT scans are bad news
and should be avoided because radiation causes cancer, was treated
like an ignoramus of the most dangerous type. That, too, has
changed, and the establishment even admits that it is now known
exactly how these more often than not unnecessary diagnostic or
preventive tests cause cancer. They even admit that cancer is dan-
gerously over-investigated through the use of these and other routine
tests on people already diagnosed with cancer, thereby further decreas-
ing their life expectancy and quality of life.
Yet, the statistical musical chairs claiming that cancer is decreas-
ing still goes on. Recently, the statistical decrease in certain cancers
was hailed as just ever so wonderful, turning out to be an insigni-
cant 1.3%. There are, however, some trends showing a decrease of cer-
tain cancers which nicely dovetail with the decline in the use of the
birth control pill and the increasing refusal to undergo cancer-pro-
moting mammography; women are turning more and more to non-
invasive thermography.
Best of all, the truth about the underlying fraud and sleaze is
emerging at a rate that I nd difcult to keep up with, even though I
study this nauseating stuff on a daily basis: for example, the fraud in
breast cancer research most of which is based on the use of the wrong
cell lines; or the all-pervading conicts of interest in cancer research
resulting in lucrative fantasies rather than science, are just two
instances. The literature on the uselessness and deadly nature of
chemotherapy is now mainstream and found in the leading journals
with recommendations to drastically decrease its use.
Truly astounding, and in a weird kind of way encouraging, is the
disillusionment oncologists are voicing. Suzanne Somers tells us of an
oncologist who lamented: I dream of the day when I no longer have
to poison people. Indeed, so do we all. Maybe, in the not too distant
future cancer patients and their doctors will stop the war on cancer
and join forces and work together with the magic and mystery of bio-
logical healing.
I
Somers, S. KnockoutInterviews With Doctors Who Cure Cancer, Crown, 2009
Beard, J. The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer And Its Scientic Basis, New Spring
Press 2010 (the reprint of the 1911 book introduced by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez)
Gonzalez, N. & Isaacs, L. both MDs, A Clinical Trial, New Spring Press, 2012
Gonzalez, N. & Isaacs, L. both MDs, The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer,
New Springs Press, 2009
Gonzalez, N. MD, One Man AloneAn Investigation of Nutrition, Cancer and
William Donald Kelley, New Spring Press, (1987) 2010
E. M. Ward et al. Research Recommendations for Selected IARC-Classied
Agents, Environmental Health Perspectives, July 2010; published simultaneously
in the Journal of the American Cancer Society, July 15, 2010 under the title:
Knowledge gaps for 20 carcinogens outlined. The project, on which these
articles are based, was begun by the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health (NIOSH)
The 20 high-priority items that the American Cancer Society calls
for to be thoroughly investigated for their ability to cause cancer are:
all lead compounds, indium phosphate, cobalt with tungsten carbide,
titanium dioxide, welding fumes, refractory ceramic bers, diesel
exhaust, carbon black, styrene-7,8-oxide and styrene, propylene
oxide, acetaldehyde, dichloromethane and methylene chloride
(DCM), trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachlorethylene (perc, tetra, PCE),
chloroform, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). This is signicant
because all of these are already known to medicine to be toxic to the
nervous system, but their ability to cause cancer has not been as fully
studied as it should.
Reducing Environmental Cancer RiskWhat We Can Do Now, the
2009 Annual Report of the US President Cancer Panel. This report
advocates organic food, warns against the cancer-causing properties
of pharmaceutical drugs especially when found in the water supply,
and re-denes cancer as an environmentally triggered disease.
On May 29, 2010, California announced, that in the light of the
overwhelming evidence that uoride is a cancer-causing agent, it
would study the carcinogenic properties of uoride as a top priority
with a view to reduce its use. See: www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/pub-
lic_meetings/cicagenda051509.html
Environmental Health published in July 2010 the evidence support-
ing the cancer-causing properties of cleaning products used widely in
North America. This will make it difcult for the manufacturers to
hide behind the association myth.
New York Times, October 21, 2009 ran an article by the chief med-
ical ofcer of the American Cancer Society. He stated that mammo-
grams are not as useful as thought to be. The advantages of screen-
ing have been exaggerated. The PSA test for prostate cancer was dis-
cussed in the same wayas unreliable and inappropriately overused.
Published in December of 2009, the US Preventive Services Task
Force announced that mammography can cause cancer and should
be used very sparingly if at all, because repeated screening increases
the chances of breast cancer signicantly. These ndings were also
published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which
warned especially women carrying the Breast Cancer Gene 1 and 2
because they are thought to be most vulnerable to the cancer-causing
activity of mammography radiation. For these and related publica-
tions go to www.naturalnews.com for the year 2009, especially entries
for June 9. See also Dr. Mercolas website for a summary of the pub-
lished evidence on the dangers of CAT scans and their power to
increase cancer, September 25, 2010. His citations include the obser-
vation from the New England Journal of Medicine that annually in the
US at least 30,000 unnecessary CAT scans are done leading to about
14,500 additional and preventable cancer cases.
The Journal of the American Medical Association also published on
October 13, 2010, that a far too large number of already diagnosed
cancer patients are continuing to be screened for additional cancers
which does not serve any purpose at all other than routine and prots.
The Radiology Society of America published ndings that screen-
ing for breast cancer increases the risk of breast cancer incidence and
called for a drastic reduction in this sort of screening in their journal
Radiology, August 24, 2010. Given it is their own business these radi-
ologists are hurting by such ndings, the information appears top be
more reliable than from any other source.
The follow-up research on the largest ever study on cancer in
women, the Womens Health Initiative once again conrmed that
synthetic hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increases the risk of
cancer signicantly in postmenopausal women. The source for this
research is the Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 304
(15) pp: 1719 ff and pp. 1684 ff., both October 2010. (Bio-identical
hormones do not carry this risk.)
First opposed by Big Pharma to the best of their ability, it is now so
well understood exactly how synthetic hormones (i.e. hormone
replacement therapy) cause breast cancer, that attempts are under
way to prevent this in any future drug design (Helkes personal and
irreverent comment: fat chance!). See Nature, September 29, 2010, on
the RANKL study which established this.
Published on April 1, 2010, in the British Medical Journal and on
April 2, 2010, in the journal of Occupational and Environmental
Medicine it was reported that proof is in that exposure to toxic chem-
icals before the age of 30 increases the risk of especially breast cancer
signicantly. The chemicals concerned were listed and explained in
detail.
On the much hyped cancer drug Tamoxifen which supposedly
reduces the recurrence of breast cancer and has been prescribed to
tens of thousands of women after a rst time event of breast cancer is
now clearly established as causing cancer itself: Cancer Research, July
1, volume 69, 2009 issue, which is the ofcial journal of the American
Association for Cancer Research. It discusses how this drug stimulates
cellular changes in the uterus and ovaries leading eventually to cancer.
Research from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center presented at the American Association for Cancer Research
101st Annual Meeting showed that meatespecially if well done, sig-
nicantly increases the risk of especially bladder cancer.
Fortune Magazine published an article on how the war on cancer
was lost by Clifton Leaf and Doris Burke on March 22, 2004. It dis-
cusses also the most important drugs used in mainstream cancer ther-
apy and their failure to be useful. Can be accessed through the
archives of the magazine.
The assertion that nutritional supplements can be used therapeu-
tically has received important mainstream support: The role of the
mineral selenium in decreasing bladder cancer risk was published in
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention on September 13, 2010.
The importance of Vitamin E in preventing and treating prostate
cancer was elucidated at a conference at Queensland University of
Technology on October 24, 2010.
The link between increased vegetable intake and cancer preven-
tion was reported from Boston University Medical Centre on October
13, 2010, and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology that
month.
Archives of Dermatology (one of the JAMA journals) published on
October 20, 2010, vol. 146, issue 10, the nding that basal cell carci-
noma is essentially a vitamin D
3
deciency responsible for more than
one million cases diagnosed annually. They conclude that this is pre-
ventable and screening for D
3
status should be obligatory.
The assumption underlying the pharmaceutical industrys
approach to cancer (shared by the Cancer Establishment) that one
can target cancer cells and then knock out the development of cancer
for good, has been challenged in favor of cancer as a systemic disease
(as viewed by Gerson, Gonzalez and others interviewed in Suzanne
Somers book Knockout) by sophisticated basic research published in
the journal Chaos; the authors are from Harvard Medical School and
the American Institute of Physics: M. Imielinski & C. Belta. Deep epis-
tasis in human metabolism, ChaosAn Interdisciplinary Journal of
Nonlinear Science, vol. 20 (2), 2010.
The American Journal of Pathology, October 14, 2010 published a
very important article by Z. Xu, A. Vonlaufen et al, Role of Pancreatic
Stellate Cells in Pancreatic Cancer. It overturns the current ideas of
how cancer spreads through the body. It has long been known that
this happens through biopsies also (read why to avoid them in the
interview with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez by Suzanne Somers in her 2009
book Knockout).
The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism published in
their October 10, 2010 issue an article showing how common treat-
ments for prostate cancer cause bone decay in men (and dont work
very well for the cancer either).
The journal Lancet Oncology published in June 2010 ndings by I.
Sipahi et al ndings indicating that common blood pressure medica-
tions are cancer promoting.
The cause of mesothelioma, the cancer caused exclusively by
asbestos (see Helke Ferries article of March 2009), is nally under-
stood and the asbestos industry can no longer claim merely associa-
tion and get away with mining this stuff. The report on this estab-
lished causality was published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences in June 2010: Haining Yang et al. Programmed
necrosis induced by asbestos in human mesothelial cells
The critical analysis of the Cancer Establishment undertaken for
decades now by Ralph Moss on cancer is known the worlds over. On
the internet an article of his from 1990 is especially helpful (as is his
book Questioning Chemotherapy) especially because now it is even
more relevant than it was 20 years ago: Chemos Berlin Wall Crumbles
google it.
A very helpful and up-to-date resource for all you need to know
about chemotherapy is the website of the Minnesota Wellness
Publications: www.mnwelldir.org. Go to Fraud: Chemotherapy.
Another excellent website is called NaturalNews by Mike Adams.
Use his search engine for chemo, radiation and surgery pertaining to
cancer.
The Scientist (www.TheScientist.com) published on September 16,
2008, the full story on how the bulk of cancer research, specically
breast cancer, relies on incorrectly identied cell lines, thereby mak-
ing the majority of the research based on unveriable data. The prob-
lem was traced to a doctoral student James Rae at Georgtown
University in Washington DC working then for pharmaceutical giant
Astra Zeneca. Rae was not prosecuted and the mis-information, pub-
lished in Nature Genetics in 2000 went viral throughout cancer
research. Sorting out the resulting mess was the subject of a confer-
ence held in 2008 at the London Health Sciences Centre in Canada.
What Went Wrong: The Truth behind the Clinical Trial of the
Enzyme Treatment of Cancer, by Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D.,
583 pp., New Spring Press, 2012.
Reviewed by Howard D. Straus of the Gerson Institute, reprinted
with the permission of the author and The Townsend Letter for
Doctors and Patients, published there December 2012.
Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a regular contributor to TLDP, has written a
book chronicling the ins and outs of the much-awaited NCI/NCCAM
clinical trial of his holistic, enzyme- and nutrition-based treatment for
pancreatic cancer. Many of us in the alternative medicine world had
waited for years with bated breath for the results, which ended up dis-
appointing at best. Now, we can nd out What Went Wrong.
Though the trial began with the major parties in general agree-
ment that signicant preliminary results warranted a full-scale, fed-
erally funded, controlled trial, the implementation left much to be
desired from the very beginning. The difcult start was exacerbated
over the rst couple of years of the study when the administrators
who were originally positive or enthusiastic about the trial moved on
to other positions in government or private foundations, and were
replaced by ofcials who were either neutral or openly hostile to the
protocol being tested.
Dr. Gonzalez and his partner, Dr. Linda Isaacs, found themselves
constantly battling their colleagues on the trials steering commit-
tee on points of enrollment, a key parameter when the treatment to
be tested depends on the cooperation and support of family and local
physicians. In addition, a ludicrously inappropriate provision (one of
many) was added over Gonzalez vigorous objections. If a patient
who was enrolled in the study, appropriately or not, and sent by the
chief investigator to the nutritional arm of the trial, in other words,
to Dr. Gonzalez for treatment, failed for any reason, the patient was
considered a Gonzalez failure, because of his intent to treat. This
ridiculous provision was enforced rigorously, as opposed to the rules
that might have beneted the nutrition arm of the trial. Time and
again, patients were enrolled inappropriately and excessively late to
the study (a virtual death sentence for an advanced pancreatic can-
cer patient), making it impossible for them to ever take a single treat-
ment, yet these were considered Gonzalez failures. This provision
clearly has far more to do with politics than with a dispassionate and
honest test of a medical procedure. There is no parallel in any other
science for this kind of nonsense. (Imagine a breaking strength test on
a steel beam, except that the beam was not properly delivered to the
testing facility. The result would never be recorded as beam failed.)
Lest the reader think that was the only, or even the worst road-
block, there were many more, and more serious breaches of scientic
protocol by the chief investigator, Dr. John Chabot of Columbia
University, some rising to the level of federal crimes. Dr. Gonzalez has
documented these breaches in his book in painful detail, dispassion-
ately and exhaustively, quoting directly from ofcial correspondence
with government regulatory agencies, investigators, even congress-
men and other government ofcials, asking them to enforce, even
obey, their own rules and laws. None of these pleas for fairness, or
even enforcement of the regulations concerning research integrity or
trial participant safety, were heeded.
There is no doubt about the complaints. In many cases, the viola-
tions were admitted to in writing by the very agencies responsible for
enforcing the rules and regulations. Still, there were no enforcement
actions, no sanctions against the violators, no adverse consequences,
and the infractions continued unabated, unpunished. The Ofce of
Research Integrity (ORI), charged with guaranteeing the integrity of
scientic research funded by the federal government, failed to take
any substantive action despite the thoroughly documented lack of
integrity by the principal investigator. The Ofce for Human Research
Protections (OHRP), whose task it is to ensure the subjects of human
trials funded by the federal government are treated with maximum
safety consistent with the experiment, failed repeatedly to protect the
patients so callously treated by the Columbia team. When the viola-
tions of the patients safety and survival were documented, the OHRP
left it to the University to investigate itself! Of course, nothing came
of that, either.
Probably the most egregious failure of the entire trial, and the one
that explains much of the blatant bias in the way the trial was con-
ducted, was appointing Dr. John Chabot as principal investigator of
this trial. Despite his complete ignorance of any aspect of the treat-
ment being tested, Dr. Chabot was charged with scientically com-
paring a complex nutritional and enzyme therapy for advanced pan-
creatic cancer against a novel chemotherapeutic regime as a control.
But Dr. Chabot was one of the main developers of the very protocol
against which the nutritional therapy was being tested, a fact that
was never brought to the attention of Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs, and
only came to light some years into the trial. None of the federal or
university organizations seemed to have any problem with this most
blatant conict of interest, a fact that alone should have disqualied
him as the principal investigator. None of the agencies that were sup-
posed to protect patients seemed to care that advanced, pancreatic
cancer patients were left untreated for weeks, a period of time that
anyone familiar with the rapid progression of the disease knows, like
Dr. Chabot does, would lose the window of opportunity for treat-
ment, and condemn the patient to a painful and hopeless death. In
the majority of the cases assigned to the nutrition armby Dr. Chabot,
patients were kept waiting for weeks beyond their availability for
treatment, untreated by any means. No explanation was offered for
the unreasonable and unconscionable delays.
This book offers copious extracts from years of correspondence and
patient records, and should be a warning to any alternative practi-
tioner, or any physician who goes against the immensely protable
pharmaceutical paradigm, that they will not be treated well, they will
not even be treated fairly by government or by their colleagues,
whether the actions of the establishment are ethical or even legal. But
even more chilling is the callous and cynical disregard with which the
desperate pancreatic cancer patients were casually tossed under the
bus for the agendas and egos of the investigators. These patients, who
had faith that the medical profession was trying to cure their cancer,
or at least do ethical research, were abandoned to their disease so the
allopathic physicians could prove a point, sabotage a competitive
treatment, or destroy a reputation. They were left hanging by their
government, by the medical establishment, by the research organiza-
tions set up to protect them. It should give pause to any patient hop-
ing for anomalous results from a clinical trial, as the documentation
shows they were simply being used as expendable ammunition,
rather than being treated with the honesty, human dignity and care
expected from physicians. I would never advise anyone to submit to
such organizational and ofcial abuse.
Oh, and incidentally, despite the systematic, long-term and thor-
ough sabotage of the nutritional treatment (it is tempting to call it
Chabotage), deeply buried in the nal report is the noteworthy
result that the two longest surviving patients in the clinical trial were
enrolled in the nutritional arm, treated by Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs.
Neither Gonzalez or Isaacs was given the guaranteed opportunity
to contribute to the nal report.
If I have any criticism of this book, it is that the complaints even-
tually became somewhat repetitive. I can understand why, since they
were submitted to a whole alphabet soup of government regulatory
agencies over the course of nearly ten years, and had to be repeated
and documented in detail each time. My criticism does not have to do
with a lack of careful and thorough documentation; but with a sur-
feit. Still, skipping repetitive areas is preferable to lacking the proof
one might need. It is the reviewers hope that some federal agency
could use this very thoroughly documented book to prefer charges
against physicians and administrators who violated the law, and/or
tortured trusting patients to death, if only to ensure that they dont
continue to do it, and that others conducting such highly manipulat-
ed trials might have a second thought about the consequences.
What Went Wrong is a cautionary tale for alternative practitioners,
for desperate patients and their families. It is painfully obvious that
many agencies in and out of our government do not want a cure,
much less a prevention, for the immensely protable disease of can-
cer, and they are willing to sacrice anyone they need to make sure
no cure is discovered.
The Gerson Therapy and the Trophoblast Theory
of Cancer Development
By Howard D. Straus*
The Gerson Therapy is a holistic, nutrition-based detoxifying therapy
for chronic, degenerative diseases with an 80-year track record of suc-
cess with ailments as different as migraine and advanced melanoma,
Fibromyalgia and tuberculosis, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
Developed in the early part of the 20th century by Dr. Max Gerson in
response to his excruciating and debilitating migraines, he found
that it also reversed rst skin tuberculosis, then other types of tuber-
culosis, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and eventually cancers of
many different types. He did not approach this problem from a theo-
retical basis; instead, the treatment evolved empirically from his clin-
ical experience and experimentation. The theory followed from both
successes and failures; that which worked was retained, that which
failed was analyzed, explained and discarded as an element of the
therapy.
The Gerson Therapy is based on Gersons observations and deduc-
tion that chronic disease is caused by two major factors: nutritional
deciency and toxicity, and that when these underlying causes are
remedied, the bodys own powerful immune system can repair virtu-
ally any ailment, often with startling speed. There is no need to stim-
ulate the immune system, as many immune therapies today
attempt to do; the immune system is designed and optimized to
repair any dysfunction on its own. The reason that diseases manifest
is not due to the immune system ignoring a threat, it is much more
due to the immune system lacking the wherewithal to combat the dis-
ease, much as a splendidly trained army is not much use against an
attacker if the troops do not have the proper armament, ammuni-
tion, food, shelter and clothing. Once the proper support is supplied
to the immune system, it awakens and acts with awesome speed and
*
This lecture was originally delivered at the Cancer Control Society in Japan in July
2009. For further information got to www.gerseonmedia.com
power. Stimulating immune system response without providing it
with the energy and fuel to respond can be likened to beating a near-
ly-dead horse: some temporary results may be observed, but they will
use the very last of the bodys reserves, with catastrophic results.
The basic elements of the Gerson Therapy, in very simplied form,
are:
Flooding the body with high-quality, complete nutrients to replen-
ish the nutritional deciencies of a lifetime.
Detoxifying the body from decades of toxic abuse, and continuing
to detoxify the body as it ejects the byproducts of healing and the
inescapable toxins to which we are all exposed supplementing the
foods and juices with vitamins, minerals and enzymes to restore
the bodys natural biological and chemical balance. All supple-
ments are substances that are normally found in a healthy body.
The Gerson Therapy is a carefully thought-through and integrated
medical system, and should not be used piecemeal, as elimination or
isolated use of any one of the elements can actually be dangerous to
the patient. The Therapy is rigorous, demanding of dedication and
hard physical work (preferably by someone other than the patient)
seven days a week for its nearly two-year duration. However, when
used correctly and consistently, this therapy has produced excellent
results for over 80 years.
A report in Alternative Therapies in September, 1995 was a retro-
spective analysis of all available data on Gerson melanoma
results, and showed a great advantage over conventional approach-
es in ve-year survival, with the greatest advantage being in the later
stages of the disease.
Recent Developments In Understanding Cancer
In a lecture in Tokyo in 2009, we spoke about the importance of prop-
er pH (acidity) in the blood stream, and how it powerfully affects the
transport of oxygen by the blood, with an improper pH (too acid) pro-
viding the ideal conditions for generation of cancer. In the past year,
we have developed our understanding of the inuence of pH consid-
erably, and present that below.
In 2010, Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, Ph.D. and his partner, Linda
Isaacs, MD published The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer. When
we read this volume, it stimulated many questions and led to a spir-
ited and highly illuminating discussion with Dr. Gonzalez.
Clearly, since the Gerson Therapy has been producing excellent
results with chronic and degenerative diseases over the past eight
decades, its practitioners understanding and explanation of the
causes of cancer and other ailments must have some basis in reality.
Unlike the highly manipulated data of chemotherapy manufacturers,
the Gerson Therapy has always produced long-term recoveries from
terminal cancer measured in decades, not weeks or months. But
there is always room for improvement. It was clear that Trophoblast
had the seeds of a fuller understanding of the origins of cancer, and
of chronic disease in general, based in part on the brilliant work of
John Beard, a late 19th and early 20th century researcher and profes-
sor of comparative embryology at the University of Edinburgh, who
was later nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Active and Passive Immune Systems
Our body has numerous defenses against attack by pathogens of
all kinds. Some of these defenses are active, some passive. The differ-
ence is analogous to a high stone wall or a castle moat, as opposed
to a troop of soldiers. Neither is absolute proof against attack, but the
defenders effectiveness is magnied many-fold by the presence of
powerful defensive fortications. In the case of our own immune sys-
tem, the active immune systems consist of miniscule warriors, such as
white blood cells, that can seek out and destroy threats to the body.
Similarly to an army, active systems must be constantly maintained
by a logistics train, typically an expensive exercise. A passive system,
however, such as a high and thick stone wall, once constructed,
requires minimal maintenance and care, and acts to discourage any
potential attacker, while offering the active force a powerful strong
point in any conict.
We should like to concentrate here on the passive systems that are
the legacy of our genetic code.
Nature always favors efciency in any system. Immunity is no
exception: Nature gave us highly efcient passive immune systems,
with active immune systems to supplement them.
One of the most important factors in our passive defensive system
is the maintenance of a proper level of alkalinity. We shall discuss
below the ramications of letting this factor slip out of balance, since
several of the other systems depend entirely on the proper pH of the
bodys environment.
Every cell in our body depends on a steady and plentiful supply of
oxygen for its very survival. This supply is vital to the survival of
every cell in every structure of our bodies. We shall show that ade-
quate and properly distributed oxygen supply is dependent on a
proper, slightly alkaline blood pH.
Proteolytic (protein-digesting) enzymes, produced by the pancreas,
suffuse our body uids and structures, and act as an important ele-
ment of our immune system, regulating the growth and development
of replacement cells in every one of our physiological structures. The
adequate supply and overall distribution of these enzymes is critical
to maintaining the orderly function of repair and replacement of our
cells, and the removal of cells which have reached the end of their
useful existence, or have met their demise by injury, disease, or
pathogen. Proteolytic enzymes require an alkaline environment (pH
> 7.0) to function, and are neutralized, or deactivated by an acidic
environment (pH < 7.0).
Every cell in our bodies, with a few notable exceptions, is replaced
about every 18 months, some considerably faster, others slower.
When cells die after their normal lifespan, a process is triggered that
generates a replacement cell on an almost precisely one-to-one basis.
This means that we are constantly being repaired, replaced and tiny
portions of us removed and disposed of, so that the average age of all
the cells in our bodies is approximately nine months. Since our cells
are constantly being replaced, any chronic disease that lasts more
than eighteen months is the result of something we are doing to keep
that disease in our bodies. Failing that, the complete replacement of
any structure would dispose of and replace the sick tissue with new,
healthy cells in 18 months or less.
Putting the above notions together yields an extraordinary oppor-
tunity for healing.
Renewal
It is generally accepted that the number of individual cells in the
human body is some large fraction or small multiple of 100 trillion
(10
14
) cells, so just for the sake of simplicity, we shall use 10
14
as a
round number. The count does not need to be precise for the purpose
of this discussion, as the arguments hold true for numbers plus or
minus an order or two of magnitude. It is also widely accepted that
virtually every cell in the body is replaced at least once every year and
a half. Many structures, such as the liver or the lining of the intes-
tines, are replaced far more quickly, in the order of days or weeks. When
the organs are replaced, they are replaced with healthy, new cells.
The numbers that this implies are staggering. A year and a half is
approximately 550 days (1.5 x 365 days). Since there are about 10
14
(about 100 trillion) cells to be replaced in 550 days, an average of
10
14
/ 5.5 x 10
2
, or approximately 1.8 x 10
11
cells are replaced each
day. That means 180 billion cells per day must be generated, and
another 180 billion cells that have died must be digested and quickly
and efciently removed from the system. This would be an impossi-
ble task if the cells were managed from a central control point. The
only way that it is possible is if each cell, when generated, knows
what to do on its own, and comes into existence in a medium con-
ducive to its birth, development, growth, life cycle and eventual dis-
posal.
A question that sprang to mind immediately upon looking at the
above numbers for daily cell creation, was, Where do these cells
come from?
It is our belief that each cell develops from an adult stem cell, of
which we must have, or can create, almost as many as we have cells
themselves. In addition, the cells that die must be replaced by new
cells at a rate that is virtually indistinguishable from unity (1:1). The
very mathematics of compounding show that if the replacement rate
were so much as one percent higher than unity, or 1.01:1, then an
organ that was replaced every six weeks, like the liver, for instance,
over the course of a mature human lifespan would end up over 90
times larger at the end of life than at the beginning. Conversely, if the
replacement rate were one percent lower than unity, or 0.99:1, the
organ would end up just over one percent of its original size at the
end of a normal 75-year lifespan.
Since neither is true, we may assume that the replacement rate is
indistinguishable from unity. How this rate is regulated is a mystery:
either an electrical or chemical signal is sent out when a cell dies, or,
perhaps, a biological or other signal that we do not yet have the
means to detect. When this signal is sent, a stem cell is either activat-
ed, or duplicated, then activated to begin the growth and replace-
ment process.
The Seeds of Life
Stem cells are dened by two properties: they can replicate themselves
indenitely, and they can develop into mature, differentiated cells
1
.
There are at least two critical factors in the development of a stem cell
into a mature, differentiated, functional cell. One factor is the inter-
nal mechanism inherent in the cells DNA that gives it a blueprint to
follow in its development. The other factor is the environment into
which it is born, and must develop.
Assuming that a stem cell starts development with intact DNA, it
must be the environmental variables that modulate and direct its
growth for better or for worse. The body is responsible for the global
variables rather than the individual development of each cell, and is
very good at what it does. Oxygen and pH are maintained at precise
levels, proteolytic enzyme concentrations are maintained at optimum
levels, nutrients are provided, and each new cell develops in a nutri-
ent and oxygen-rich environment, with genes expressing themselves
at designed-in times to effect the proper development of a functioning
cell.
The fact that this process occurs hundreds of billions of times per
day, and that we humans survive so long in all manner of environ-
ments, climates and situations shows how incredibly resilient the
process is. But it also calls into question why stem cell research is so
important. We each have, or can create, as many stem cells as we
need for a lifetime, probably almost as many as we have cells.
Stem cells can remain dormant, they can split into two stem cells,
they can develop normally into a functioning, differentiated cell, or
they can develop into a trophoblast, all determined by external sig-
nals received from their environment. All outcomes but the last are
normal processes, and the last is a normal process for a fertilized egg
in the uterus. If this last process occurs anywhere else, or under any other
circumstances, it is the beginning of cancer.
Acidity, Oxygen and Cancer
We know that one of the vital responsibilities of the blood stream is to
transport life-sustaining oxygen to each cell in the body, 24 hours a
day. It does this through the medium of red blood cells (RBCs), which
oat in the blood stream, each separate from the others, carrying
oxygen on their surfaces. If they collide in the presence of atomized
fat, the RBCs stick together, rather like rolls of coins, and remain stuck
until the fat in the blood is metabolized and removed. As long as they
are stuck together, their surfaces of the RBCs are inaccessible to oxy-
gen adsorption, plus these rouleaux (as the clumps of cells are called)
can no longer pass through the smallest capillaries like the tiny, ex-
ible individual RBCs can. The blood stream thus loses a signicant pro-
portion of its oxygen-carrying capacity, plus the ability to supply the
furthest reaches of the capillary system, and important organs and
structures begin to be oxygen-starved.
The danger of this situation is highlighted by many experiments
done in the first half of the 20th century by Nobel Laureate Otto
Warburg, who noted that when he deprived tissue of oxygen, it
turned cancerous, and the cancer could not be reversed simply by
restoring oxygen availability to the tissue.
We now believe that what Warburg was witnessing was not nor-
mal cells turning cancerous, but normal cells dying from lack of oxy-
gen, and new cells being born into an environment where a normal
oxygen supply was lacking. Without an adequate supply of oxygen,
most such nascent cells would die, but some, even just a few, might
gure out how to survive by using fermentation instead of the much
more efcient process of oxidation as an energy source. Because of its
low energy efciency, fermentation does not supply cells with enough
energy to develop normally or to perform normal functions; all they
can do is to grow and split indenitely. This is cancer.
If it is so desperately important for RBCs to keep from colliding,
there must be a powerful mechanism that normally keeps them sep-
arated. In fact, we see in photomicrographs of normal blood a eld
lled with little circles that are unusually evenly spaced in the view.
How do they maintain this uncannily regular separation in the pres-
ence of millions of other RBCs?
It turns out that healthy RBCs carry millions of electrons on their
surfaces, enough to give them a net negative charge. When two RBCs
come into each others vicinity, they repel each other due to their sim-
ilar electrostatic charges, and the closer they get, the more strongly
they repel each other
8
. In theory, they should never collide.
This process should protect us, and normally does, but when the
bloods normal, slightly alkaline pH (7.35-7.36) goes acidic, the criti-
cally important electrons are stripped from the RBCs, allowing them
to collide and stick together, forming rouleaux, or clumps that do not
carry oxygen efciently, and cannot pass easily through the smallest
passages of the capillary system.
Here the macro factor of pH operates at a micro level (individual
RBCs), maintaining an environment that is conducive to oxygen
transport. Disturb that pH balance, and suddenly the blood cant
carry oxygen as efciently as it needs to, and organs and tissue are in
jeopardy of developing cancer.
Proteolytic Enzymes and Their Influence
on Stem Cell Development
An adequate level of proteolytic pancreatic enzymes in the develop-
ing cells environment is also critical to its proper development, as is
a pH level high enough (alkaline) to allow enzymes to function prop-
erly. At one of its earliest stages, the developing stem cell is nudged in
one of two directions by the level of proteolytic enzymes in its imme-
diate vicinity. This, of course, translates into the requirement for an
adequate amount of proteolytic enzymes in the entire body environ-
ment and a concurrent global alkaline pH, since the development of
stem cells occurs billions of times daily in every nook and cranny of
our structure.
The choice between the two directions in which the stem cell might
develop is between metamorphosis into a normally-developing differ-
entiated adult cell (with enough functioning proteolytic enzymes), or
into a trophoblast (in most cases, the seeds of cancer).
We have seen the enormous ood of creation and renewal that
occurs within a normal body on a daily basis, with nearly 200 billion
cells a day being created and 200 billion cells a day dying and being
removed. If the environment is a normal, healthy [alkaline] one with
adequate and active proteolytic enzymes, the process runs smoothly,
as intended. But lacking adequate levels of enzymes in the overall sys-
tem, some of these billions of cells are going to be nudged down the
wrong development path, into nascent cancer cells.
If even one tenth of one percent of these cells develop into tro-
phoblasts, that means that there are 200 million new cancer cells
being born every day. While our immune systems should be able to
handle that, the fact that these cells are being created implies a seri-
ous depression in those functions, too. It does not require many sur-
viving cancer cells being created every day to start or restart cancer,
and their location in the body is almost irrelevant.
When a cancer patient is subjected to tumor removal surgery, and
nothing is done about his overall internal environment, the very
environment that gave rise to cancer in the rst place, the daily
processes in his body, when operating in the same environment, will
continue to create cancer cells at an enormous rate, some of which
will result in additional cancerous lesions. The insult to the body of
surgery, of course, will accelerate the process.
Acid-forming Influences In Daily Life
Since the bodys pH level is so critically important in both oxygen
transport and stem cell development, it becomes precisely that impor-
tant to our overall health, cancer prevention, and even cancer rever-
sal. We must work to maintain a nutrient input that keeps nudging
us towards an alkaline pH.
But when we look around us, and analyze the Standard American
Diet (SAD), we see all too many foods, substances, drinks that tend to
push our body pH lower, towards dangerous acid levels. Chief among
these inuences, especially in the United States, is the amount of ani-
mal protein in our daily intake. However, there are many others,
including coffee, pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, recreation-
al drugs, many fats and oils, fast foods, processed foods and rened
our products, all of which tend to acidify the body. Considering the
percentage of the foods that Americans consume daily that are acid-
forming, it constantly amazes us not that there is so much chronic dis-
ease in our culture, but that there is so little.
It is no surprise that as we age, the pH levels that we have culti-
vated over our lifetimes start to drop below 7.0. Most elderly people
carry around pH levels of 6.5 or lower, and by the time cancer mani-
fests as an identiable disease (tumor, lesion), that level has dropped
even lower. Topical or local solutions (surgery) for such a global prob-
lem are doomed to failure from the start. Likewise, poisoning various
important physiological processes using targeted chemicals (pharma-
ceuticals) adds to the problem, rather than alleviating it. The dismal
record of standard cancer treatment in the United States is mute tes-
tament to the above statement.
The only way to restore sanity to the sick bodys environment is to
raise the pH level to its normal 7.35 or 7.36. Otherwise, we are cleaning
the carpet in a rainstorm, while ignoring the gaping hole in the roof.
Alkaline-forming Influences and the Restoration of pH
In general, just as animal protein based food is acid-producing after
metabolism, the ash remaining after the metabolism (digestion) of
plant-based foods, with some exceptions, is alkaline producing. With
the high volume of plant-based food and juices given daily on the
Gerson Therapy, the patients pH is raised fairly rapidly, in the order
of days rather than weeks. With the restoration of the pH to an alka-
line level, the blood streams oxygen carrying capacity is restored, the
blood thinned, the patients overall well-being and mental function
are improved and pain levels signicantly lowered, although he/she
still has a long road ahead.
All structures and organs function better with oxygen, the brain
being one of the primary ones, since it is one of the largest users of
oxygen in the body. Optimism and a sense of hope return. Skin
begins to regain its tone and color, since it is now being supplied with
oxygen and oxidation enzymes from the copious input of fresh,
organic fruit and vegetable juices.
When the pH level is restored to alkaline levels, the all-important
proteolytic enzymes are reactivated and resume their functions of
directing the proper sequence of events in the replacement and
renewal of expired cells, and the removal of the dead material,
including the now-dying cancer cells, which no longer are receiving
the nutrients or environment that cancer needs to grow and ourish.
This is by no means a claim that the patients are cured. One
cannot possibly recover in a matter of days from a disease that took
years, even decades to build, and is the result of an overall collapse of
so many parts of the conglomerate system we consider immunity.
But the rapid response of the body is not imagined or theoretical; the
patient experiences it as a signicant reduction in pain, a return of
energy, a noticeable sequence of healing reactions (sometimes
known as homeopathic reactions), and a much more positive out-
look. Since cancer pain is often very intense, the rapid reduction in
pain for most patients should be enough to justify use of the Gerson
Therapy simply on compassionate grounds.
Proteolyitic Enzymes and the Removal Of Dead Cells
We touched above on the staggering numbers involved in the replace-
ment and renewal of all our cells in any 18-month period, but have
not yet discussed the problem of removing the hundreds of billions of
cells that die each day. The cells that expire are almost always part of
the matrix of a structure or gland that needs to keep on functioning
as the repair work is being done. If the dead cells are not removed,
they will constitute a diffuse mass of carrion that cannot be good for
us on any level. Trash collection and removal is a critical, if unglam-
orous, function, it is true, but woe is the city (or body) that goes with-
out it even for a few days!
One of the effects of not removing dead cells is that the surround-
ing matrix is the recipient of by-products of the decaying matter.
Whether they are normal cells that have simply died as part of their
normal life cycle, or cells that have died due to injury or toxicity, or if
they are cancer cells that have died because they cannot survive an
alkaline environment, or if they are pathogens and antibodies that
have carried on their battle in the structure is immaterial. This necrot-
ic material will further acidify the environment, and will further poi-
son the patient if it is not efciently eliminated.
The way the necrotic material is normally handled is by the pro-
teolytic enzymes that should be perfusing the entire body and digest-
ing dead cell matter for removal by the blood stream. If there is a
shortage of proteolytic enzymes in the environment due to their use
by the digestive system (to metabolize meals of animal protein, for
instance), or if the environment is so acidic that the required enzy-
matic action is deactivated, the enzymes cannot perform their critical
functions, the dead material is not removed, and the local environ-
ment becomes ever sicker and more acidic, and less conducive to
healing and a healthy metabolism.
To put a more vivid image to this problem, imagine carrying an
empty backpack around, and every day placing a single quarter-
pound (115g) raw hamburger patty into the top. If the backpack is
never emptied, it will not be very long before the backpack with sev-
eral pounds of rotting carrion becomes the major issue in your life, yet
the daily addition of more carrion continues. Essentially, this is the
process that goes on inside our bodies when the proteolytic enzymes
that should be dissolving and carting away the waste are disabled.
The Gerson therapy, as well as the Kelley protocol further devel-
oped by Gonzalez, both provide copious amounts of supplemental
proteolytic enzymes to the body. Gonzalez describes in Trophoblast
how he has researched the potency and production of pancreatic
enzyme supplements, and developed what he considers the optimal
supplement to supply his patients. To date, Gerson practitioners and
patients have been using commercially produced enzymes, some
manufactured in Europe, but they are now preparing to test
Gonzalez preparation for any improvement in results it could bring.
In both therapies, supplemental proteolytic enzymes are a critical-
ly important element of the regime. It is certainly clear, at least to this
author, that the enzyme-enabling alkaline environment is also of
critical importance to the removal of masses of dead cells every day.
Both important elements are partially or completely negated by a diet
high in animal protein due to the use of the enzymes to digest the
animal protein-rich meal and their resulting unavailability for other
critical functions, and the neutralization of remaining enzymes due
to the acidifying inuence of the ash remaining after animal protein
metabolism, among other causes.
The Gerson Therapy remedies at least one of the conditions that
enable cancer formation and survival through its vegan diet (almost
no animal protein) and juicing program (13 8-ounce glasses of fresh-
pressed, organic vegetable and apple juices daily). The high vegetable
intake quickly changes the bodys metabolism from acidic to alkaline,
often in a matter of days, an oxygen-rich environment not conducive
to the survival of cancer cells.
Conclusion
We have attempted to extend the rationale of the Gerson Therapy to
the cellular level by explaining, with the help of Dr. Gonzalez work
on trophoblasts and proteolytic enzymes, how stem cells developing
into differentiated cells, and the removal of dead cells in our structur-
al matrix need adequate levels of proteolytic enzymes, plus the prop-
er pH levels for them to function. The Gerson Therapy has for over 80
years succeeded in preventing and reversing chronic or incurable
diseases in part because it quickly adjusts the pH levels in the inter-
nal environment to an alkaline level using nutritional input as the
prime means of manipulation, and restores the pancreatic enzyme
levels and functionality to normal levels.
To learn more about Dr. Gerson and the Gerson Therapy:
See the bibliography of all Dr. Gersons books and peer-reviewed jour-
nal publications at http://www.doctoryourself.com/bib_gerson.html,
kindly maintained by Dr. Andrew Saul, Assistant Editor of the Journal
of Orthomolecular Medicine. A bibliography of publications about the
Gerson Therapy by other scientists can be found at http://www.docto-
ryourself.com/bib_gerson_therapy.html.
I
References
Ward, P.S. History of the Gerson Therapy, contract report produced for the US
Ofce of Technology Assessment, US Government Printing Ofce, Washington,
DC, 1988.
Gerson, M MD. A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases, Sixth Edition. The
Gerson Institute, San Diego, CA, 2002.
Hildenbrand, GLG, Hildenbrand, LC, Bradford, K, Cavin, SW. Five-Year Survival
Rates of Melanoma Patients Treated by Diet Therapy After the Manner of
Gerson: A Retrospective Review. Alt Ther, Vol.1, No. 4, September 1995.
Gonzalez, N MD, PhD, Isaacs, L MD. The Trophoblast and the Origins of
Cancer, New Spring Press, New York City, 2010.
Gerson, C, Bishop B, Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other
Chronic Diseases, Second Edition, Totality Books, Carmel, CA, 2009.
Beard, J DSc, The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer and Its Scientic Basis, originally
published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1911, republished by New Spring
Press, New York City, 2010.
Warburg, O, Nobel Laureate, Director, the Max Planck Institute for Cell
Physiology, Berlin-Dahlem. The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer.
Lecture at the 1966 gathering of Nobel Laureates, Lindau, Germany.
Abramson, HA, Moyer, LS, The Electrical Charge Of Mammalian Red Blood
Cells, from The Biological Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, Mar.
20, 1936.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Pancreatic-Digestive-Enzymes-
Deciency&id=3291730 Acidity literally kills pancreatic function, which leads to
indigestion, deciencies of vital nutrients, and deciencies of vitamins, minerals
and trace elements. Poor digestion caused by excessive acidity can be the
underlying cause of many diseases and disorders.
http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/glossary/ Stem cell: An
immature cell capable of both indenite proliferation and specialization into all
cell types found in the body, e.g. in the blood or in the brain.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, MD of New York City, co-
author of The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer, for his generous
encouragement, patient responses to our questions and gentle prod-
ding to publish this essay. We gratefully acknowledge the time and
editorial eye of Dr. Andrew Saul, DC, PhD, Assistant Editor of the
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, who pointed out some deciencies
that we hope have been remedied. Charlotte Gerson, co-founder of
the Gerson Institute, co-author of Healing the Gerson Way and daugh-
ter of Dr. Max Gerson, MD has championed the Gerson Therapy for
the past 40 years, and grounded our understanding of the mechanics
of defeating cancer and chronic disease and rebuilding the body
using Dr. Gersons holistic methods.
About the Author
Howard Straus is the grandson and biographer of Dr. Max Gerson,
MD, and the son of Charlotte Gerson. He is a 1964 graduate of MIT
(Physics), founded the Gerson Healing Center in Sedona, Arizona,
and founded Cancer Research Wellness Institute, a non-prot educa-
tional agency. He lectures around the world on the Gerson Therapy
and often appears on radio and Internet interviews. His wife recov-
ered from her third occurrence of cancer using the Gerson Therapy
during their engagement and wedding 21 years ago.
Update Spring 2013
For those who are interested in this shift in understanding about how
cancer develops, I highly recommend in addition to the work of Dr.
Gonzalez, Dr. Burzynski and the Gerson Institute a book that just
came out from by a mainstream author who does not hail from the
natural medicine crowd: T. N. Seyfried was a cancer researcher at Yale
University and is a professor of biology at Boston College; he has
more than 150 PubMed-indexed scientic research papers to his
name. His new book is entitled Cancer as a Metabolic Disease and pub-
lished by Wiley 2012, available on amazon.com.
SECTI ON 4
OLD TRUTHS IN NEW IDEAS
Vitamin DNatures Magic Bullet
June 2009
Can you imagine what would happen if a drug company
came out with a single pill that reduces the risk of cancer,
heart attack, stroke, osteoporosis, PMS, SAD, and various
autoimmune disorders? There would be a media frenzy
the likes of which has never been seen before!
Well, guess what? Such a drug exists it is the sun.
M. F. Holick MD, discoverer of Vitamin D
3
At the 32nd annual conference on orthomolecular medicine in 2003,
the ballroom at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto was packed with doc-
tors and medical researchers. One of the speakers began by asking:
What would you like me to speak about? Cancer? Osteoporosis?
Autoimmune diseases? Psychiatry? It was Reinhold Vieth of the
University of Toronto. His status as someone qualified to address all
of the above conditions authoritatively was justied because he is
one of the worlds leading authorities on vitamin D. What was most
remarkable was that this speaker had not prepared a lecture! He was
asking the audience what they would like to hear him speak about
whatever area of medicine interested them most and he would be
happy to tell them how that area is affected by Vitamin D
3
, what Dr.
Zoltan Rona calls the sunshine vitamin.
Vitamin D
3
is the single most important precursor (a pro-hor-
mone) of all hormones, vitamins, and minerals that we need.
Without this vitamin, the bodys signal systems (described
variously by hormones, neurotransmitters, or peptides which are all
the sametheir names are different depending on the systems they
are found in), and super-catalysts (minerals), cannot enable all
other catalysts (vitamins) to cause the liver to create the 600 vita-
min/mineral-dependent enzymes our bodies depend on. Vitamin D
regulates also calcium and phosphorus levels, without which our food
cannot nourish us properly.
A healthy human body uses rst the liver and then the kidneys to
convert vitamin D obtained through diet and sunlight into an active
form that the body can use. Up until 1998, it was believed that
patients with chronic kidney disease are unable to complete the sec-
ond step.
While still a graduate student in 1970, Michael F. Holick proved
that actually every cell in our bodies has D
3
receptors, not just the
liver and kidneys. Holick also discovered that vitamin D
3
is the only
active form of Vitamin D, and therefore is essential.
Vitamin D
3
prevents 17 types of cancer. Exactly how it prevents
breast, colon and prostate cancers is now fully understood. Several
long-term studies have shown that simply fortifying a person with
1,100 IU of D
3
daily reduces the incidence of cancer by 77% over a
three-year period. D
3
also protects us against approximately 100
autoimmune diseases. NOTE: the nonsense Health Canada publish-
es, asserting that only 400 IU are needed is just that: nonsense. Health
magazines of the kind that consist mostly of advertisements and fash-
ion/cosmetics information repeat this nonsense faithfully.
As well, D
3
in therapeutic doses revs up all those activities in the
immune system that ght viral and bacterial infection, thus its
emerging reputation as the antibiotic vitamin. In a historical con-
text, for a century before the advent of antibiotics, it was observed
that daily, long-term exposure to sunshine was the most successful
cure for tuberculosis. The proof that sunlight can cure rickets and TB
won Dr. Niels Ryberg Finson the Nobel Prize in 1903. Rickets in chil-
dren had been treated since the 1700s by exposure to sunlight.
Indeed, the Floating Hospital in Boston in the 19th century was a
hospital ship on which rickets-aficted children were taken on long
trips for heliotherapy. The effects were observed, but the pathways
were then unknown.
The research of the last ve years has further shown how D
3
works
to prevent (and even cure) certain types of liver disease (such as fatty
liver), as well as bacterially-caused pregnancy problems, tooth decay,
organ rejection in transplant surgery, certain skin diseases (atopic
dermatitis, psoriasis), Type I diabetes in children, Multiple sclerosis
and Parkinsons disease. D
3
also reduces the need for painkillers in
chronic pain patients.
Adequate levels of this vitamin in our bodies are only present if we
invite sunlight in. Our bodies can only make D
3
by exposure to the
sun. Consequently, when sunlight is geographically or seasonally
unavailable, or if (for reasons of bio-individuality) some people
cannot expose themselves for too long to sunlight, supplementation
is absolutely necessary. Immigrants from sun-drenched countries to
Canada also require D
3
supplementations; the darker the skin, the less
they are able to make enough D
3
when living in higher latitudes.
And so, fortied by the very best published science, you can con-
dently tell your doctor you wont need the (mercury-laced) u shot
for any strain of inuenza because nothing can prevent a u as effec-
tively as D
3
. It has been shown that the u season is strictly associat-
ed with seasonal lack of sunlight, and that taking D
3
supplements pro-
tects you in fall, winter, and spring.
You can also rest assured that your blood pressure will be just ne,
too, if you have optimal amounts of D
3
in your cellsoptimal being
dictated by the geographical region you live in: the more sun, the less
blood pressure problems; the less sun, the more D
3
supplementation
is required to normalize and maintain healthy blood pressure. In fact,
it is imperative not to take statin drugs and blood thinners for reduc-
ing blood pressure, since they prevent D
3
from being absorbed, as do
SECTION 4: Old Truths In New Ideas 239
aspirin and all non-steroidal anti-inammatory drugs (NSAIDS).
The sun also protects you against autoimmune diseases. A brief
survey of the D
3
maps available on the websites cited at the end of this
article will show you how access to the sun (or lack of it) correlates with
autoimmune disease incidence. PubMed, the international registry of
mainstream medical research, lists about 50,000 items on D
3
therapeu-
tics and deciencies.
Recommended Dosages of Vitamin D
Exposure to the sun for at least 20 minutes twice a week is necessary.
In a bathing suit in summer, your skin will produce 10,000 IU in
an hour. In fall, winter and spring, all Canadians should supplement
with optimal amountsespecially lactating mothers and their breast-
feeding infants, because human breast milk is virtually devoid of D
3
and babies generally cant sunbathe.
Following that 2003 presentation by Dr. Vieth, I became aware of
vitamin D research and the fact that D
3
supplementation also pro-
tects against sunburn. So, a few summers ago I gave all my grand-
children 2,000 IU with breakfast at the cottage, and found that we
could spend the whole day at the glorious sandy beaches on
Manitoulin Island without suffering from sunburns. Prior to this dis-
covery, I had always taken them to the beaches in late afternoon to
avoid the inevitable burns.
On the subject of Vitamin D
3
for seniors, Drs. Klatz and Goldman
in the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients (April 2009) state:
Americans over age 50 are thought to have a higher risk of develop-
ing vitamin D deciency. The ability of skin to convert vitamin D to
its active form decreases as we age. And the kidneys, which help con-
vert vitamin D to its active form, sometimes do not work as well when
people age. In our latitude, it is necessary to take at least 4,000 IU
daily (I take 8,000 IU; the older you are the more you need) of good
quality Vitamin D
3
.
The current Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of 200600 IU
per day, in the words of Dr. Vieth, offends the most basic principles
of pharmacology and toxicology, making these guidelines scientif-
ically indefensible. The indisputable fact is that everybody, from
infancy onwards, needs an absolute bare minimum of 1,000 IU daily
just to survive, never mind being protected against future latency dis-
ease, as described in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2003,
vol. 78/5). Children need at least 2,000 IU daily, 10 times the RDA
amount of 200 IU, according to The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology
and Metabolism, July 2008, which further asserts that the RDAs outdat-
ed concepts of toxicity are based on awed or fraudulent research.
(I sometimes wonder of the RDA levels, all of which are not sup-
ported by the mainstream science publications, are established by a
bunch of Big Pharma people just make sure people dont too healthy
too quickly.)
In North American, 42% of all Caucasians are decient in even
the silly RDA levels of vitamin D, and 60% of African-Americans are
even worse off because they require more sun to produce sufcient
amounts of D
3
. A Finnish study demonstrated that because Finland
gets so little sunlight, it has the worlds highest incidence of Type I dia-
betes; their government started corrective action about a decade ago
by introducing mandatory fortication of certain foods with Vitamin
D. Most of Canada has even less sunlight than Finland because of so
much cloud coverwhy arent we doing the same to our food?
Overdoses and Caveats
There are precautions necessary depending on the type of skin you
have. Dr. Holicks book and the websites cited below give the details.
As reported this year in Medical Hypothesis (vol. 72), exposure to the
sun through glass may be fatal. Indoor exposure to the sun blocks
UVB radiationthe one that creates D
3
in your cellsand increases
UVA radiation which alone passes through glass and can cause
malignant melanoma.
Being a pro-hormone as well as a vitamin, D
3
is subject to the pre-
ventive biological mechanism of self-destruction that kicks in when
the body signals it has enough D
3
. Back in 1999, Vieth and his col-
leagues challenged the international medical community to provide
evidence of toxicity. Today, the National Institutes of Health agrees
with him (Archives of Internal Medicine, 169 /6, 2009): you would have
to take 40,000 IU daily for a very long time to have symptoms of tox-
icity. Cancer patients on nutritional therapy achieve 30,000 IU daily.
Vitamin D
2
, however, is toxic! It is useful only to plants, fungi, and
invertebrate creatures (mammals are vertebrates dependent on D
3
). If
you are victim of some foolish advice and take synthetic D
2
, calcium
will be driven into your arteries producing atherosclerosis, the lead in
pesticides and contaminated water and air will be driven into your
bones, and the queen of all minerals, magnesium, on which your
nervous system and muscles depend, will be driven out in the
urine. This was demonstrated years ago by Simon Fraser University
researchers led by Dr. J.C. Moon.
Where Do Sunscreens Fit In?
According to www.skinbiology.com: It now appears that many heav-
ily-used chemical sunscreens may actually increase cancers by virtue
of their free radical generating properties. And more insidiously,
many commonly used sunscreen chemicals have strong estrogenic
actions that may cause serious problems in sexual development and
adult sexual function, and may further increase cancer risks.
Chemical sunscreens include:
Benzophenones (dixoybenzone, oxybenzone)
PABA and PABA esters (ethyl dihydroxy propyl PAB, glyceryl
PABA, p-aminobenzoic acid, padimate-O or octyl dimethyl
PABA)
Cinnamates (cinoxate, ethylhexyl p-methoxycinnamate,
octocrylene, octyl methoxycinnamate)
Salicylates (ethylhexyl salicylate, homosalate, octyl salicylate)
Digalloyl trioleate
Menthyl anthranilate
Avobenzone [butyl-methyoxydibenzoylmethane]
Adding to the problem of toxicity is the fact that large amounts of
applied sunscreens can enter the bloodstream though your skin. This
may be a factor in the large increases in cancer (breast, uterine,
colon, prostate) observed in regions, such as Northern Australia,
where the use of sunscreen chemicals has been heavily promoted by
medical groups and the local governments and is even mandatory at
many beaches.
Many sunscreens also contain triethanolamine, a compound that
can cause the formation of cancer causing nitrosamines in products
by combining with nitrite used as preservative and often not disclosed
on sunscreen labels.
Furthermore, Holicks research has shown that the application of
chemical sunscreens results in a reduction in the skins ability to pro-
duce D
3
by a whopping 97.5 per cent!
A point of interest: Canadas new 2006 pesticide legislation came
about when MP Marlene Jennings and her daughter developed seri-
ous skin problems in 1999, which they traced back to the pesticides
found in popular sunscreen lotions. That got her galvanized into
action and new legislation was formulated under the leadership of
the late Senator Charles Caccia.
I never approved of any sunscreen products then on the market,
because the ne print revealed the presence of toxins I was not pre-
pared to put on my own skin or that of my children and grandchil-
dren. Today, there are a few broad-spectrum sunscreens available
that do not block the D
3
-producing UVB rays, therefore do not pro-
mote skin cancer, and do not contain pesticides, either. And sunburns
in our family were always treated with vitamin E oil only. In my expe-
rience, nothing works better or faster (even for diaper rash).
Lawsuits and Campaigns
I had hoped that writing about vitamin D
3
would be a holiday from
my monthly survey of the cesspool of corruption on which modern
medicine oats, but I was mistaken.
When in 2003 Holicks book on vitamin D
3
appeared for the gen-
eral public, he was interviewed on CBC radio. He told of the (unsuc-
cessful) prosecution initiated against him by dermatologists in the
U.S. (who were likely getting kickbacks from sunscreen lotion compa-
nies for supporting the lucrative sun-phobia illusion). What was the
nature of the prosecution?
He and his colleagues had also vigorously protested the U.S. gov-
ernments pronouncing UV radiation a known human carcinogen.
He observed that saying that UV radiation causes cancer and should
be avoided is akin to saying that water causes drowning, so dont
drink water.
Since then, Holick, his U.S. colleagues, and Vieth in Canada, have
been remarkably successful and making the truth known. However,
they actually had to sue the FDA in 2005 to force the administration
to reverse the aforementioned public health guidelines on vitamin
D
3
. These served mostly the sunscreen and milk industriesthe rst
wishing to maintain that lucrative sun phobia; the second because
drinking more D
3
-fortied milk is obviously good business. You would
have to drink 40 glasses of milk to get the minimum requirement of
1,000 IU of D
3
daily. It so happens, that African-Americans dont
drink milk much and they also need a lot more sunlight to make
enough D
3
. They also carry the greatest burden of D
3
deciency-related dis-
eases. Of all children diagnosed with rickets in the U.S., 83% are black.
Citing Constitutional rights which mandate protection for all
Americans, and pointing to the historical precedents of food fortica-
tion with niacin to prevent pellagra, and with folic acid to prevent
birth defects, the Vitamin D Council doctors demanded that D
3
now
become part of public health initiatives, as required by law.
The suit against the FDA quotes the great Constitutional law
expert and US Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis from a 1928 rul-
ing: Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government
ofcials shall be subjected to the rules of conduct that are commands
to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government
will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our gov-
ernment is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it
teaches the whole people by its example. Given that Canada has the
highest rate of Multiple sclerosis, we should inform Ottawa of
Brandeis observations and initiate a reform of Health Canadas vita-
min D
3
policies.
In March 2009, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and
Technology announced that there are not really any useful tests for
vitamin D. Meanwhile, interests other than public health continue to
contaminate reform efforts: The Institute of Medicine (IOM), charged
with revising those scientically insupportable intake levels for D
3
,
quietly assembled their advisory committeeexcluding the vitamin
D
3
experts, such as Holick and Vieth. The International Vitamin D
Council raised hell of course, and we shall see what the IOM will
come up with. Fortunately, the sun continues to shine for at least
another 4 billion years and we can worship it and ignore the crooks.
Why D
3
Above All Else?
Vitality readers know how bodily systems break down into disease pat-
terns from environmental toxins, and you know about the preventive
and curative properties of vitamins and minerals. You also know
about the often deadly enslavement to symptom-controlling drugs
and killer vaccines served up from Big Pharmas kitchen. You might
understandably ask: whats this with vitamin D
3
s claim to being a
magic bullet when so much else is known to be important as well?
Imagine a total, lasting power outage in Toronto. Thats a vitamin
D
3
deciency. Various generators and candles would deal with the
emergency for a while, just as our bodies D
3
reserves would do from
the last ll-up of 10,000 IU obtained from one hour of sunshine in a
bathing suitthis reserve lasts about 60 days. Such a power outage
would soon incapacitate hospitals (DNA repair), schools (cellular
growth), the garbage collection and sewage systems (immune sys-
tem), telephones and internet (neurotransmitters/hormones), and the
city would break down (organs).
Living creatures thrive as long as they know they are children of
the earth and that the grace of the universe maintains thema uni-
verse that boasts billions of suns. One of them is fortunately ours.
I
Z. Rona, MD, The Sunshine Vitamin, 2012
James Dowd MD. The Vitamin D Cure, 2009
M. F. Holick MD. The UV Advantage, iBooks, 2003
A. Hoffer MD. Orthomolecular Medicine for Everyone, Basic Health, 2008
Z. Rona MD. See his excellent Vitality article on Vitamin D, September 2007.
www.vitamindcouncil.org
www.sunarc.org
www.orthomolecular.org subscribe to their free monthly newsletter
www.lpi.oregonstate.edu website of Linus Pauling Institute
www.Vitasearch.com for monthly reports on nutritional medicine research
The single best source for Vitamin D
3
research and how to use the sun is Dr.
M. F. Holicks The UV Advantage, iBooks, 2003. An internet PubMed search will
lead to his latest research publications, all found in the leading medical science
journals.
The textbook on which is 2003 book is based is Vitamin DPhysiology,
Molecular Biology, and Clinical Application, McGraw-Hill, 1999.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 78 (5): 912-119, 2003, on vitamin D
3
deciency as the source of latency diseases.
Diabetes Educator, January 2009 on D
3
and diabetes prevention
Seattle Times, April 17, 2008, on the ndings in Finland on Type I diabetes and
D
3
deciency
Mail Online, UK, February 6, 2009, report on Oxford Universitys studies
showing D
3
levels and incidence of Multiple sclerosis
BBC News, October 13, 2008, reported on a publication in the October 08
issue Archives of Neurology which showed the relationship between D
3
and
Parkinsons disease
ScienceDaily (on-line science service) reported on March 27, 2009, and the
BBC reported on March 25, 2008, on research done by the Mayo Clinic and the
British Society for Rheumatology respectively. This showed the reduction in
inammation and chronic pain when patients were supplemented with high
doses of vitamin D
3
.
Circulation published in January 2008 the results of research done by Harvard
Medical School on vitamin D
3
deciency always being associated with heart and
stroke disease.
Orthomolecular News Service, February 2, 2009, reported on the various aspect
of vitamin D
3
dosage as well as dosage issues regarding vitamins C and E.
D. J. Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World
Out of Balance and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope,
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2008
Vitamin D
3
as the antibiotic vitamin is a report from the International Vitamin D
Council reported in Science News, Nov. 11, 2006
The fact that glass lters out UVB rays that cause vitamin D
3
production is in
Medical Hypothesis, vol. 72:434-443, 2009
Scientic American had an excellent article on the latest vitamin D
3
research in
its November 2007 issue.
The medical journal articles on vitamin D
3
and the u are available for free
downloading on the website of the International Vitamin D Council. The moist
important ones are:
J.J. Cannell (the president of the Vitamin D Council) et al. On the epidemiology
of inuenza in Virology Journal, February 25, volume 5/9, 2008
J. J. Cannell et al. Epidemic inuenza and vitamin D in Epidemiology and
Infection, December 2006, vol. 134/6
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, May 14, 2009, reported on the
vitamin D-deciency involved in infections that cause pregnancy problems
Research on liver diseases being mediated through D
3
deciencies was reported
at the 73rd Annual Scientic Meeting of the American College of
Gastroenterology in Orlando, Florida, October 2008
The Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, February 19, 2009, reported on
the many research publications showing that tooth decay and vitamin D
3
deciency are causally related.
The need for vitamin D
3
supplementation during acute illness was provided by
the Garvan Institute of Medical research in Sydney, Australia, and reported in
ScienceDaily, May 2, 2009
Vitamin D
3
and cancer was reported in the Globe & Mail, June 8, 2007 (by
Martin Mittelstaedt), the American Journal of Public Health, vol. 10, 2004, and
the moist relevant sources are in Holicks UV Advantage, 2003, as well as a slew
of research best accessed through PubMed by searching with the key words
vitamin D + cancer. Most of it is provided by the International Agency for
Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and the European Institute of Oncology in
Milan, Italy. A journal that has lots on cancer and vitamin D is the Archives of
Internal Medicine and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
On blood pressure and the inuence of the seasons due to availability of D
3
, see
Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 169/1:75 ff, 2009, Circulation, vol.
117/4:503 ff, 2008 and Hypertension, vol. 52/5:828 ff, 2008
The new tests being developed for vitamin D
3
levels was reported in
ScienceDaily, March 27, 2009.
The Institute of Medicine conicts of interest and inappropriate committee
selection was reported in the International Vitamin D Council Vitamin D
Newsletter of January 20, 2009. To see the details got to
www.nationalacademies.org/cp/committeeview
For the full story on Canadas 2006 pesticide act download for free my book
Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health, Kos, 2004, on my
website www.kospublishing.com and start on page 54.
The ruling by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis is found in United States
versus Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
Update Spring 2013
Research published in Cancer Causes and Control, January 2013, has
shown that low vitamin D
3
levels are linked to a high risk for pre-
menopausal breast cancer. See: Sharif B. et al. Serum 25-hydroxyvit-
amin D and breast cancer in the military: a case-control study utiliz-
ing pre-diagnostic serum.
Most interesting are the new studies from Norway and Sweden
showing that the recent u epidemics there are clearly linked to pop-
ulation-wide vitamin D
3
deciency. The truth about the uslessness of
u vaccines will out, it seems. For details go to Mercola.com.
The Birth of a StarDr. A. Gabys Magnum Opus
June 2011
Conventional therapies have a minimal to zero
efcacy prole, a dismal safety prole, and
produce adverse effects that are insufferable.
Dr. Philip Rouchotas, Editor-in-Chief,
Journal Integrated Healthcare Practitioners,
from his editorial April/May 2011
Orthomolecular medicine is the preservation of good health and
the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the
human body of substances that are normally present in the body.
Linus Paulings denition of orthomolecular,
a term he coined in 1968
It weighs nine pounds, has 1,358 pages, cites more than 15,000
research articles, and took 30 years to create. The usual dismissive hot
air from hooked-on-drugs physicians about lack of scientic proof,
proper studies, real data, and similar atulent arrogance is now most
seriously challenged by this rst-of-its kind textbook on nutritional
medicine. Its author is Yale and Emory University-educated Dr. Alan
Gaby, a past president of the American Holistic Medical Association.
As a medical student in the 1970s he was inspired by Linus Pauling,
Roger Williams, Abram Hoffer and Adelle Davis. When starting prac-
tice in 1980, he decided to devote one third of his time to treating
patients using nutritional approaches and two thirds to collecting
and analyzing tens of thousands of published studies that relate to
nutritional medicine. The result is a vast treasure of mainstream
research. The publication of this textbook is as timely as it is neces-
sary because patient attitudes have changed dramatically; now their
fears and hopes have hard-core scientic support. The Medical Post
reported on May 11 that more than 80% of Canadian doctors are
asked for natural health products, and 55% of their patients are
extremely wary of pharmaceuticals.
The characteristic of nutritional medicine is that it does not seek
feverishly for new patentable molecules able to deliver enough phys-
iological bang to ensure making huge bucks from ever more people
duped into believing they need these drugs. Instead, what was known
to be true about vitamin C in the 1950s is still true today, and we have
so much more research since then revealing its uses.
Dr. Gabys 30-year project has also rescued from oblivion much
old but true knowledge which was in danger of becoming lost in that
immense circus orchestrated by Big Pharma-controlled medicine. Ever
since pharmaceuticals became a stock market commodity in 1978,
we have created a medical system in which deception is often not
just tolerated but rewarded, as medical ethicist Dr. Carl Elliott
observes in White Coat Black Hat (see review page .).
In a recent interview Dr. Gaby observed that medical doctors are
not pleased that people can go to the health food store and take care
of themselves; furthermore, nutrients, which cannot be patented,
are in direct conict economically with pharmaceuticals. One of
the reasons I wrote Nutritional Medicine was to pull together all of
the research in one place, so that people will realize how much of it
there is. It is not a problem of inadequate research, but it is the fact
of underutilization of available research. The most insidious aspect
of this turf war is the long history of funding research designed to
produce negative results with nutrients. Those standard dirty tricks
include using nutrient dosages well below even the (scientically
insupportable) RDA, using synthetic instead of properly absorbable
forms of vitamins, providing only one nutrient as if it were a chemi-
cal drug and deliberately ignoring its known and necessary synergis-
tic properties with other nutrients, using inactive forms and more. Dr.
Gaby relates an eye-witness report of Big Pharma representatives
bragging about how easy it is to issue a negative press release [of
purely invented or doctored evidence] and get it published promi-
nently. A 1998 article in the Archives of Internal Medicine described
how nutritional medicine only received public attention when there
was some news of alleged toxicity, but news of its efcacy is ignored.
The shift from drug thinking and symptom control to the nutri-
tional paradigm is however occurring. A large study conducted by the
American Cancer Society published this May involved 100,000 people
followed over 14 years and showed that adherence to basic nutrition-
al and lifestyle advice had resulted in dramatically lower risks of
death from cancer, heart disease, and all other causes (McCullough).
In the Netherlands an analysis of that countrys healthcare system
showed that the patients of doctors with training in complementary
and nutritional medicine save the health care system a lot of money
due to fewer hospital stays, less use of prescription drugs, and the
mortality rate was also lower (Kooreman & Baars). Cost efciency
and better health from nutritional medicine was reported this year
also for old age homes (Nerukar).
The evidence on the negative effects of salt have become so strong
that, as CBC radio reported in early May, several Canadian hospitals
have told fast food chains, including Tim Hortons, to leave hospital
cafeterias. Meanwhile, mainstream research is now exploring millen-
nia-old herbal medicines in use in India for their demonstrated
antibiotic properties against pathogens unresponsive to most synthet-
ic drugs. High-tech medicine recently found that there is a symbiotic
interaction at the DNA level between benecial intestinal bacteria
and our immune systems (Hall). Many more examples of standard
medicine catching up with nutritional facts could be given.
Nutritional medicine is focused on the essential building blocks of
life and knows that these are constant and universal. Secondly, it is
rooted in the knowledge that there are essential nutrients that sustain
life and can never be taken for granted or ignored. Dont mess with
essentialsunderstand them. Signicantly, new discoveries about the
healing properties of essentials never negate previous knowledge
about them. Unlike a Big Pharma product, nobody has ever had to,
or ever will have to, go to court for a multi-billion dollar restitution
for damages caused by an unknown, or carefully hidden, lethal
potential of a vitamin. Chemical drugs seek to manipulate nature
while hoping to get away with their known toxicity (sometimes suc-
cessfully); nutritional medicine enters into a dialogue with nature,
asking: What do you want me to do so you can do your work to
repair and sustain?
On April 5, Congressmen Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Jared Polis (D-
CO) introduced the Free Speech About Science Act (HR 1364) to ensure
that legitimate, peer reviewed scientic studies may be referenced by
[supplement] manufacturers. Polis stated: Todays science has
shown that vitamins and nutritional supplements can offer success-
ful, natural alternatives to drugs.
Unlike standard medical books, which focus on the mechanics of
bodily systems vulnerable to exterior pathogens and assumed genet-
ic predispositional aws, Gabys textbook is arranged according to the
key areas of the bodys relationship to its energy sources. Thus, the
nutritional medicine practitioner looks for the presence of four key
problem areas: hypoglycemia, food allergies, thyroid problems, and
candidiasis. The whole of nutritional medicine is focused on metabo-
lism and biological ecologynot mechanics, because mechanics
always depends on energy. Using the obvious utility of conventional
diagnostic terminology, Gaby approaches each disease with the tools
of nutritional science, namely cleaning up the diet and looking for
what deciencies or imbalances in essential nutrients have caused or
contributed to ill health. Most illuminating are the details on how to
cook properly and what toxicities and deciencies are produced when
you dont do that. Gaby discusses virtually every vitamin, mineral,
amino acid, and a host of other essential nutrients, giving the scien-
tic evidence for each as he describes what they do for us and how
exactly their lack messes up all systems.
However, it would be unfair and ignorant to assume that standard
medicines bible, Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, now in its
17th edition and weighing 10 pounds, may be obsolete. On the con-
trarytogether, it and Gabys tome complement each other wonder-
fully. However, Gaby provides lots of trumpet-quality wake-up calls
for the Old Boys at Harrisons. He enlarges their work and provides a
most important and thoroughly dynamic corrective to the astonish-
ing acceptance of medicine being inescapably toxic. Gaby provides
overwhelming evidence showing that in every disease state known
avoidance of poison and the provision of healing nutrients are key.
When comparing the entries in Harrisons and Gabys textbooks
on Crohns disease, migraine, urinary tract infections, hormone
replacement therapy, ADHD, autism, and cancer the biological facts
are brilliantly explained in the Old Boys manual; occasionally there
is a barely noticeable nod to the importance of some nutritional fac-
toid, but generally they dismiss nutrition as being without supportive
evidence. Gabys enormous bibliography provides complete contra-
diction of that traditional arrogant dismissal, which also highlights
two points: rst, that research into nutritional medicine has been
going on regardless of Big Pharmas obstructionism; second, here we
have proof of the truth of Linus Paulings famous observation that
people are always down on what they are not up on.
Looking now at that other famous text, the Merck Manual cur-
rently in its 18
th
edition, it is cheering and surprising to see that it has
some excellent discussions of alternative and nutritional therapies
much more and much better that in Harrisons which has not as yet
shed delusions of its superiority. Yet, if you use Gabys as well as
Harrisons and the Merck Manual and a few more sources thoughtful-
ly, they will all help you survive well.
From the patients perspective, Harrisons provides the best infor-
mation on how bodily systems work and just how and why synthetic
drugs are toxic; its pharmacology section is pure gold and impecca-
ble. Trained on Harrisons, it is really weird how unfamiliar doctors
are with that hair-raising information about the drugs they so blithe-
ly prescribe. Similarly, the annually updated Compendium of
Pharmaceuticals and Specialties is, in my view, mandatory reading
for anyone who has just been handed a prescription. If you still want
to risk taking that drug, after reading the manufacturers own confes-
sions about its known toxicity and side effects, and after having com-
pared how nutritional medicine handles that same illness as Dr. Gaby
describes itwell, I guess, then God help you. In May, the University
of Arizonas College of Pharmacy published ndings about those clin-
ical software systems with which pharmacies work everywhere, show-
ing that they are generally unable to alert pharmacists to potentially
deadly drug-drug interactions. Encouragingly it has been pharma-
cists for almost a decade who publish the information on which
essential nutrients are depleted by all commonly prescribed drugs
(Pelton & LaValley) and so enabling patients to top up on those nutri-
ents while taking prescription drugs. Just remember, that mainstream
medicine acknowledges that the leading cause of death is correctly
prescribed drugs. Noteworthy is the fact published in May that for
most new drugs the FDA did not publish any comparative efcacy
data (Nikolas); Gabys book is essentially one huge comparative ef-
cacy data base!
Gabys textbook is not a cookbook and mercifully free of guide-
lines that suggest standards of practice for the herd to follow, instead
of using their brains to address the biological individuality and
unique history of the patient. Gabys textbook is more like a road
map. Thus, the cause of a persons multiple sclerosis may be chronic
Lyme disease infection, toxicity from mercury amalgam, an infection
from a root canal gone systemic, vitamin D deciency, or long-term
exposure to electromagnetic pollution. Similarly, childhood autism
may have come from fetal exposure to all of the above or vaccines in
the rst few months after birth. Migraines can be caused by hidden
food allergies or hormone imbalances or infections attacking the cen-
tral nervous system. Pharmaceutical drugs can cause disease com-
plexes while attempting to treat certain conditions. However, what all
medical conditions have in common is nutrient deciencies associat-
ed with their initiation and development. Gabys discussion and sup-
porting evidence show what nutritional research has proven to be
curative, and what commonalities in possible deciencies will always
apply. For even more rened detail and case histories, Gabys text-
book is fruitfully supplemented by the independent-minded patient
who also consults the books by Drs. Werbach, Gerson, Hoffer, and the
environmental medicine information and autism treatment protocols
of Dr. Jozef Krop (see website version of this article with its references,
resources, suggested check list, etc.).
Remembering what Gloria Steinem taught, namely that the per-
sonal is always also political, this book needs our supportive action.
Textbooks are expensive, so I suggest taking a copy of this article
(download from Vitality website) to your area library to request
adding it to the reference sectionHarrisons and the Merck Manual
are already on the shelf, and they will in a few decades be mostly
obsolete. Your favorite health food store should be requested to have
a copy for customers to consultit will increase sales of the most
valuable products on offer. Your GP should also be approached: doc-
tors can afford such books and deduct them as business expenses, and
when using the information provided here (instead of wasting their
precious time on drug reps whose advice promotes mostly profession-
al burnout), they will have the exhilarating experience of seeing their
patients become healthy. Our MPPs should be made aware of this
textbook as wellthey all know Medicare is on the verge of bankrupt-
cy, and here is the information on how to serve the public interest with
documented and veriable facts that also help save the economy.
I
Sources cited:
A. R., Gaby, MD, Nutritional Medicine, Fritz Perlberg Publishing, 2011, ISBN 13-
978-0-9828850-0-0, orders www.doctorgaby.com
Interview with Dr. A. Gaby by D. Redwood in Health Insights Today (Cleveland
Chiropractic College), March/April 2011, Vol. 4 (2), available from
www.healthinsights.today.com
Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties, 2011 edition (required
information from pharmaceutical companies) at all pharmacies, free online, in all
doctors ofce
C. Elliott, White Coat Black Hat, Beacon, 2010
Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, 18
th
edition, McGraw Hill, 2010
P. Kooreman & E. Baars, Patients Whose GP Knows Complementary Medicine
Have Lower Costs and Live Longer, in press, on-line May 2011; complete text
accessible at www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk
J. Krop, Healing The Planet One Patient at a Time, Kos, Third Edition, 2008,
available through EcoHealth and Wellness, Mississauga, Tel. 905-816-9657
A. Nerukar et al. When Conventional Medical Providers Recommend
Unconventional Medicine: Result of a National Study, Archives of Internal
Medicine 2011, vol. 171 (9)
M. L. McCullough et al. Following cancer prevention guidelines reduces risk of
cancer, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. In American Cancer
Societys report on Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention, April 5, 2011
Merck Manual, 18
th
edition, 2006. This edition includes complementary and
alternative medicine such as herbs, vitamins, minerals etc. in surprising detail
and positively presented to the doctors reading this manual. See Townsend
Letter for Doctors and Patients, Feb/March 2011, analysis by Stephanie Pina p.
64-68.
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, October 4, 2008;
report on DNA of Good Bacteria Drives Intestinal Response to Infection
(published in Immunity August 9, 2008)
H. Nikolas et al. Availability of Comparative Efcacy at the Time of Drug Approval
in the United States, JAMA, 305 (17), May 2011
M. Panghal et al. In vitro antimicrobial activity of ten medicinal plants against
clinical isolates of oral cancer cases, Annals of Clinical Microbiology and
Antimicrobials, BioMed Central open-access journal, May 2011
R. Pelton & J. LaValle, The Nutritional Cost of Prescription Drugs, Morton, 2004
N. Piermont, Wind Turbine Syndrome, K-Selected Books, 2009
K. R. Saverno et al. Ability of pharmacy clinical decision-support software to alert
users about clinically important drug-drug interactions, Journal of the American
Medical Informatics Association, 2011, vol. 18 (1) May, 2011
Suggested resources when consulting Dr. Gabys textbook for specic conditions:
H. Ferrie ed. Ending Denial: The Lyme Disease Epidemic, Kos, 2010
C. Gerson, Healing the Gerson Way, Totality Books, 2007
C. Gerson, Defeating Obesity and High Blood Pressure: The Metabolic
Syndrome, Totality Books, 2010
N. Gonzalez, The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer, New Spring Press,
2009
Health Alert: Disease Clusters Spotlight the Need to protect People from Toxic
Chemicals, 2011 report from National Disease Clusters Alliance, available for
free on www.nrdc.org
T. Hertoghe MD, The Hormone Solution, Three Rivers Press, 2002
M. R. Werbach, Textbook of Nutritional Medicine, Third Line Press, 1999
M. R. Werbach, Nutritional Inuences on Illness, Third Line Press, 1993
M. R. Werbach, Foundations of Nutritional Medicine, Third Line Press, 1997
M. R. Werbach, Nutritional Inuences on Mental Illness, Third Line Press, 1999
M. R. Werbach, ed. Case Studies in Natural Medicine, Third Line Press, 2002
Total Wellness Newsletter by Dr. Sherry Rogers www.prestigepublishing.com
Alternative Therapies, www.alternative-therapies@innerdorrway.com
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, available in Canada through 416-733-2117
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients www.townsendletter.com
Medical Veritas (on-line) link on www.kospublishing.com
PLoS Medicine (free access online medical journal)
Integrated Healthcare Practitioners (bi-monthly Canadian medical journal)
To find a doctorGoogle:
American Academy for Environmental Medicine (Canada and US)
Canadian College for Naturopathy
OMA Section for Complimentary Medicine (via OMA head ofce)
Gerson Institute
International Academy for Oral and Medical Toxicology
International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine
Consider this Check List:
1. Do I have mercury amalgam llings and/or root canals? If so, con-
sult a dentist registered with the International Academy for Oral
and Medical Toxicology.
2. Are there pesticides in my vicinity? Find out more through Dr.
Sherry Rogers newsletter and the sources given by her, nd a
naturopath able to do such tests, google American Academy for
Environmental Medicine.
3. Could my chronic condition be due to chronic Lyme disease infec-
tion? Consult CanLyme and the Lyme Action Group (google), get
a copy of their book, edited by Helke Ferrie, Ending Denial, for guid-
ance (details in Lyme Disease section below).
4. What is really known about the drugs I have been prescribed (not
what the doctor said about them)? Go on-line and read what the
manufacturer has to say via the 2011 edition of the CPS, google
each prescription drug adding + side effects or + toxicity.
5. Could the vaccines my child received be the cause of the problem,
i.e. ADHD, autism, learning problems ? Read my article of March
2011 and my book review of Dr. Andrew Wakeelds book. Check
out the treatment protocols in J. Krop MD, Healing the Planet One
Patient At A Time, third ed., 2008, call Kos Publishing 519-927-1049
6. Am I still using toxic cleaning and personal care products? Get out
the magnifying glass, enter each listed ingredient into google +
safety data.
7. Do I have wireless services anywhere in my house, a smart meter
on my house, a cell phone in my bag, a microwave oven in my
kitchen, digital devices and a TV in my bedroom, or does my land-
line phone emit high Gauss levels? Get rid of all of the above and
turn your cell phone totally off when not in use. Consult the books
on electro pollution listed above and get guidance from their
resource sections.
All of these questions, when answered and followed up will reveal
what nutrients are compromised, which ones can help to regain
health once your house, your mouth, your blood, and your organs
have been cleaned up.
Update Spring 2013
Big books like this one are often prohibitively expensive for individu-
als to purchase. The way to deal with that is actually simple: go to
your local library and request that they purchase it for their holdings.
I have suggested this to many readers of my articles, and so far they
have never been turned down. Some went to several libraries in their
area, and all of them bought the suggested book. Once this happens,
the library displays it at the main entrance with some information
about it, thereby drawing attention to it for all library users.
J. Prouskys Textbook of Integrative Clinical Nutrition
March 2013
Textbook of Integrative Clinical Nutrition by J. Prousky ND. MSc,
CCNM Press, 2012
Dr. Prouskys new and updated edition of this now classic textbook is
a goldmine for patients and doctors alike who wish to nd out just
exactly what the difference in practice and diagnosis is between
orthomolecular medicine and toxicmolecular medicine. The rst
term was coined by the late great Linus Pauling and refers to the right
natural molecule needed by the organism to maintain health and in
pharmaceutically effective doses to cure much disease. The second
term was coined by the late Dr. Bernard Rimland, author of Infantile
Autism (that so infuriated mainstream defenders of vaccines).
Toximolecular medicine is such a wonderful word! It captures the
whole mess that is modern medicine so perfectly in a single word, it
feels like an educational moment of enlightenment.
Jonathan Prousky is the editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular
Medicine, founded originally by Dr. Abram Hoffer. This small and
thoroughly truthful journal, upon which I have relied for so many
years now, shares with the justly famous online open access journal
PLoS Medicine the property of presenting careful research and a focus
on clinical resultspatient outcome, as opposed to the lure of fame
and fortune.
As the Chief Naturopathic Medical Ofcer of the Canadian
College of Naturopathic Medicine, located in Toronto, Dr. Prousky has
taught the Year Three Clinical Nutrition Course there for the past 12
years. He holds enough impressive degrees and has so many years of
teaching and clinical practice experience, that it is no surprise he can
so clearly and systematically lay out the facts about food and health
and the therapeutic applications of specic nutrients to specic dis-
eases. He does this so beautifully and provides such excellent sources
from mainstream research, that one gets drawn into reading this
book wanting to know what comes next. Health as a Grand System
unfolds before ones eyes. The tone of the book is totally focused on
how to achieve good clinical outcomes. For me, who is so involved in
the legal and political war zone of modern medicine, reading this
textbook is rather like the application of vitamin E on a burnah!
This book arrived on my desk just as I was working on my
November 2012 article on Toxic Psychiatry (included and updated
in this book). The academic battles in psychiatry make feathers y
like possibly in no other eld, and who the heck cares for the patients!
I am inescapably involved in this battle because I published Dr.
Abram Hoffers wonderful scientic memoirs, Adventures in Psychiatry
(Kos, 2005) which annoys so many and pleases undoubtedly many
more. Toximolecular psychiatrists cannot stand the fact that the rst
ever double-blind placebo-controlled studies comparing nutritional
supplementation to drugs in schizophrenic patients were conducted
by Dr. Hoffer and published in the still leading international jour-
nalscomplete with 10-year follow-up studies to boot. While working
on my article, I had been wading for some weeks through the morass
of unsupported arrogant dismissal of the published facts and contin-
ued excellent outcomes to this day, and so I turned to Prouskys book,
opening it immediately at the section on schizophrenia. To my
absolute delight I found there a systematic analysis of those early
publications, the current follow-up results on Hoffers pioneering
workall laid out in tidy, accessible patterns, fully supported by cur-
rent published evidence, rather like a lovely Persian carpet. Yes! Here
the BS was just swept aside and the healing information laid out
without emotion, jargon, and extraneous opinion.
Dr. Hoffers son John is a professor of medicine at McGill University
in Montreal. He wrote a most helpful preface to this textbook in
which he states: The great merit of this textbook is that it can be inte-
grated with conventional therapies. When conventional medicine is
ineffective, too risky, inadequately supported by evidence, or runs
against a patients preferences and values, clinical nutrition can play
a complementary role by pointing out biologically and clinically
promising approaches
Prouskys presentation, and its application throughout the discus-
sion in this book, on what we must know about biochemical individ-
uality is especially helpful. It makes it clear why in orthomolecular
medicine, as opposed to the toximolecular approach, the patient-doc-
tor relationship focuses on the genetic, deep and personal historical
biology of the patient. This is not your one-size-ts-all approach we
have become used to. Here our considerations even include the differ-
ence between the diets humanity evolved on to those that are mostly
dead and in our supermarkets. It is not possible to be healthy and
recover from disease without good and fresh food tailored to our indi-
vidual needs. Discovering the details is what this book teaches.
Textbooks are expensive, and this one is, too. However, there are
many of us who want to check out what our standard doctors advise
and nd out if there may be something else that is not as scary; and
there are many of us who doubt that long-term standard drug rou-
tines are such a good idea; nally there are many, and I have often
been among them, who cannot avoid using a toxic drug in situations
where that is the only possible course of action. Thats when consult-
ing this book can cool down anxiety and offer rational assistance sup-
ported by impeccable research. For those who cannot afford this book,
I suggest they ask their local to acquired itso it becomes available
to many people. In my experience libraries never say no to such a
request.
SECTI ON 5
TOXI C MEDI CI NE
Lies*
April 2006
The Truth shall make you free.
Gospel of St. John
The Truth shall make you freebut rst it hurts.
Gloria Steinem
Nicolas Regush, well known for his masterful investigative reporting
on health issues for CBC radio and television, wrote shortly before his
death the following observation:
There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising
false hopes. There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no mir-
acle breakthrough on the horizon. Medicine, as we know it, is dying.
It is entering a terminal phase. What began as an acute illness
reached the chronic stage about a decade ago and progression
towards death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything
one could have predicted. The disease is caused by conict of interest,
tainted research, greed for big bucks, pretentious doctors and scien-
tists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankrupt marketing
automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and
state regulatorsall seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and
*
This article was published in 2009 when this information was new and scandalous.
The only difference between 2009 and 2013 is that the reports on fraud now are
weekly and sometimes daily.
foul odor. (Courtesy of Croft Woodruffs e-mail service: croftwoodruff
@gmail.com, July 23, 2003, originally from www.redagsweekly.com)
Between last December and the end of March events have
occurred in Norway, Korea, the US and especially Canada that not
only conrm Regushs observations, but also raise hope for medicines
rise from the ashes. The healthiest plants grow in the richest manure.
Mainstream medicine is in an uproar, and the most prestigious and
the most decent people are doing the roaring. Consider the following
four jaw-dropping events:
Last Christmas, Camilla Stoltenberg spent Christmas Day catch-
ing up on the latest issues of the worlds oldest medical journal,
Britains justly famous Lancet . To understand why that would be hol-
iday reading one needs to know that this lady happens to work for the
Norwegian Institute of Public Health. An article in the October 2005
issue by world-renowned cancer researcher Jon Sudboe of Oslo
University caught her attention. He claimed that the incidence of oral
cancer is signicantly reduced in patients regularly taking a common
pain killer, namely paracetamol (i.e. acetaminophen a.k.a Tylenol,
which, incidentally, is well-known for its toxicity to the liver when
taken long-term). The patient base was 908 people and, therefore,
impressive. Camilla Stoltenberg is a scientists, so she also read the
super small print at the very end of the article where she found to her
amazement, that the these 908 patients supposedly all came from
Norways national database on cancer. That data base was not going
to open until after Christmas, in January 2006, and had, therefore,
not been available to this researcher: Camilla happens to be in charge
of it.
When she dug further, it turned out that 250 of those patients had
the same birthday. He faked everything: names, diagnosis, gender,
weight, age, drug use. There is no real data whatsoever, just gures he
made up himself. Every patient in this paper is a fake said Stein
Vaaler, director of the Oslo Radium Hospital and a colleague of Jon
Sudboes. That hospital and Swedens Karolinska Institute (which
SECTION 5: Toxic Medicine 267
coordinates the annual Nobel prizes) are now investigating Sudboes
38 other major studies published on similar topics since 1997. All of
them are being reviewed because of their immense potential for harm
to people. Cancer research is never just an academic exercise, but its
results tend quickly to be put into action, especially if the author is as
renowned as Sudboe was and if the research is published in the
Lancet. Getting corrections out to the worlds practicing oncologists is
of vital importance.
Camilla Stoltenberg also happens to be the sister of Norways
prime minister. Now, my personal, highly irreverent and unsubstan-
tiated guess is that this guy did not have his political campaigns
funded by Big Pharma, because within two weeks, by January 16,
Norways parliament was already working on a national law that
will, when likely passed this fall, make it the rst country to criminal-
ize medical fraud. Until now, proven scientic fraud resulted in dis-
grace, being red and unable to ever publish again. Now its going to
be jail time. Norways minister of health takes the view that there
must be no doubt about the quality of our research. If this approach
to fraud is taken in the rest of Europe, as it easily might, given that
Norway is part of the European Union, the quality of medical
research will change in ways that makes ones head spin. (Source The
Guardian, Jan 16, and Nature, Jan. 19, 2006.)
Simultaneously, starting last December, and fully hitting the fan
also this January, is another fraud scandal which, in nancial terms,
is the biggest in science to date. It involves another world-famous
medical scientist, the Korean geneticist Woo Suk Hwang. He cloned a
dog, an Afghan Hound called Snuppy, which made him famous as
did the (in)famous sheep Dolly cloned by Scottish scientists. This suc-
cess allowed Hwang to lead a big, international project: the cloning
of human stem cells. In December it was announced that his claimed
success was a complete and deliberate fake. Apparently, he also
bullied fellow female researchers into donating eggs for this project,
and that ethics breach is now also under investigation. The Korean
government had funded this effort to the tune of US $ 30 million, and
a dozen big-name US scientists backed it with research, prestige, and
a few more million dollars. The bio-tech companies that stood to gain
by this research, had it been real, are still reeling from the impact of
this fraud case on the value of their stock; they are now especially
worried about Korean government policy. Korea had doubled its
spending on biomedical research since 2001, largely due to Hwangs
inuence, and now is likely to divert resources to rival research areas.
Meanwhile, the many scientists, who had their names added to
Hwangs publication of faked results, are busy trying to clear their
names. No fraud in scientic history has cost so much money and
damaged so many reputations on three continents. This also means
that the hope that human cloned embryos could be used in a patient-
matched method very soon, to replace damaged tissues and treat
genetically anchored diseases, is pretty much on the back burner for
now. (Nature, January 5, 12, 16 and 19, 2006.)
While Sudboe and Hwang defrauded their governments and
raised false hopes for millions of potential patients, two-time Nobel
nominee Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra of Canadas Memorial University
in Dalhousie, Nd., managed to perpetrate a hoax on three sectors at
onceand for a long time as well: rst, his fraudulent research on the
allergic potential of the leading baby formulas misled mothers feed-
ing their babies on these products for more than two decades. Second,
he took a pile of money from several drug companies to fund his illu-
sory research and then literally ran off with it to Switzerland. Third,
more recently he produced fraudulent research which misled nutri-
tional medicine with an absurd multi-vitamin study. The story was
expertly produced by CBCs television and aired in late January under
the title The Secret Life of Dr. Chandra.
Food and pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s were competing
for control of the formula market: Nestle had a product called Good
Start and Ross Pharmaceuticals makes Isomil and Similac. Both
wanted to provide research evidence that would show that their prod-
uct was less likely to cause allergies in babies. Dr. Chandra took
money from both and produced completely ctitious studies based on
no data at all. He even produced a ve-year follow-up study based on
no follow-up whatsoever. Memorial University ofcials put their
heads in the sand and did nothing, even though his chief research
assistant, Marylin Harvey, had blown the whistle on her boss and the
British Medical Journal formally requested the university to commence
fraud investigations. The BMJ had refused to publish Dr. Chandras
studies when he would not submit the raw data for verication.
His recent multi-vitamin scam nally brought everything to a
head because it was so weird, that it caught the attention of the New
York Times. Fraud investigations nally began and resulted in Dr.
Chandra disappearing until the CBC caught up with him in the Swiss
Alps. In this study Dr. Chandra claimed that by merely taking a daily
multi-vitamin (conveniently his own product) after the age of 65, one
would be protected against dementia. His study showed dramatic
improvement in memory function in some 96 seniors from St. Johns.
These people supposedly went from being seriously demented to com-
pletely normal within one year. However, Dr. Chandra messed around
with the complicated scoring system required for the measurements of
memory performance: closer analysis showed that the patients were
perfectly healthy at the start of the study. Dr. Chandras entire body
of work since 1992 is now suspect.
What motivated these fraudulent scientists, each of whom was
deservedly famous for his work before he went off the deep end? The
Korean disaster has the feel of corporate pressure to perform. How that
pressure has now almost ruined basic research worldwide is described
in a fabulous new book by investigative journalist Jennifer Washburn,
University Inc. The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education (Basic
Books 2005). She shows how universities increasingly refer to students
as consumers and to education and research as products they now
spend more on lobbying in Washington than defense contractors do.
Chapter 5 describes how health research is now largely controlled by
corporate interests, such as the biotech industry.
Dr. Chandra appears to have been motivated simply by money
which he took from anybody willing to pay. Reportedly, he told
Nestle, Well, you didnt really pay me enough money to do [the
study] correctly. Personal and corporate greed both have the same
effect: the generation of lies. The editor of Scientic American observes
in the March issue, that the increasing cases of fraud in immunology,
breast cancer, brain aneurysms, and genetics will probably rise
because of the growing nancial ties between university researchers
and corporations [and] the jockeying for leadership among nations in
high-stakes areas such as stem cells; some scientists may feel more pres-
sure to deliver results quicklyeven if they have to make them up.
Natures editor (January 12, 2006) discusses these current as well as
past fraud cases and observes, This will surely leave people asking:
if this single cell in the body of science was so malignant, how fares
the rest? That brings us to perhaps the biggest scandal of all, which,
however, paradoxically offers hope for medicines rebirth.
On February 20 the Canadian Medical Associations holding com-
pany, in charge of the CMAs medical journal, red the editor-in-chief
Dr. John Hoey. He appears to have been red because he supported
the medical use of marijuana, criticized Quebec for downsizing its
hospitals emergency departments which has resulted in deaths, and
for taking on the Canadian Pharmacists Association over the anti-
deluvian behavior of some of their members with regard to the
morning-after pill: the Association did not censure pharmacists
who would not ll a request for these Plan B pills without asking
extremely personal questions about the womens sexual behaviorin
violation of current privacy laws. Finally, Dr. Hoey also criticized our
new federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, calling him two-tiered
Tony for his endorsement of privatizing medicine. In each of these
four instances Dr. Hoey was asked to withdraw or substantially
change his editorialsan absolute no-no in journal publishing which
requires a solid re-wall between owners and editors. Shockingly, the
CMA itself totally wimped out, and instead of supporting editorial
independence, essential to medical integrity, did nothing. So, to their
great credit, most of the CMAs editorial board resigned, as did most
of the journals staff, as did the next two appointees expected to ll
their places. It is anybodys guess when the next issue of the 95-year
old CMAJ will appear.
The CMAJ is internationally recognized as one of the ve leading
medical journals in the world, and deservedly so ever since Dr. Hoey
became its editor ten years ago. The other four are the British Medical
Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet and the Journal
of the American Medical Association. Dr. Hoey made the CMAJ the rst
medical journal freely available on-line, opened the CMAJ to research
in nutritional and environmental medicine, relentlessly called Big
Pharma and medical researchers conicts of interest to account, and
set new international standards and rules in 2004 for research integri-
ty as the president of the Vancouver group (the international associ-
ation of medical journal editors). Dr. Hoey is a living embodiment of
the conscience of medicine. (Treat yourself to Dr. Hoeys ery editori-
als over the past six years, free on-line.)
To the surprise of the forces in corporate medicine undoubtedly
happy to see Dr. Hoey go, the editors of the other four leading jour-
nals roared and closed ranks in support of Dr. Hoey. Dr. Cathrine
DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical
Association went through a similar confrontation on editorial inde-
pendence with Big Pharma and government forces 6 years agoand
she won, with the result that JAMA has nally become worth reading.
She observed, If they (the CMA) think theyre going to get any
[replacement] editor worth anything or any editor that anybody
would respect, theyre kidding! And if they think anybody in their
right mind would send any decent paper there, theyre wrong. They
destroyed their journal. (www.cnews.canoe.ca, March 1,2006; see
also New England Journal of Medicine editorial, March 30, and Google
The Globe & Mail and CBC for the whole story.)
Retired chief Canadian Supreme Court justice, Antonio Lamer, has
been appointed to head a panel charged with sorting out this mess.
Whether Dr. Hoey will again lead the CMAJ is unclear, but leading
medical editors will not bend. This is nally the beginning of open
war declared by the leaders of medicine against corruption. When
this is over, we will all be a lot healthier.
I
Recommended Reading
J. P. Kassierer, On The Take: How Medicines Complicity With Big Business Can
Endanger Your Health, Oxford University Press, 2005. Dr. Kassierer was, until
recently, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine; he is a leader in the
current battle for research truth and editorial freedom. For book reviews go to
www.helkeferrie.com .
The following are highly recommended; almost all are written by leading
mainstream doctors who are also medical researchers.
D. Healy, Pharmageddon, California University Press, 2012
D. Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac, Lorimer 2004
I. Kirsch, The Emperors New Drugs, Basic Books, 2010
H. W. Welch et al. OverdiagnosedMaking People Sick in the Pursuit of Health,
Beacon 2011
R. Fitzgerald, The Hundred-Year Lie, Plume, 2009
R. Whitaker, Anatomy of An Epidemic, Broadway 2010
A. Cassels, Seeking Sickness, Greystone, 2012
M. Makary, Unaccountable, Blumbury, 2012
Progress The Hard Way*
January 2009
Work on what has been spoiled has supreme success.
I Ching, Hexagram 18
(Chinese Book of Changecirca 5,000 years BCE)
For medicine, 2008 brought some true progress, some astonishing rev-
elations, and the initiation of huge challenges of profound impor-
tance for 2009. Lamenting the fact that medical politics continues to
reveal relentless corruption and that standard medicine mostly con-
tinues to lumber on in a fog of prejudice to the drumbeat of reality-
challenged dogmas comes naturally, but not everything that comes
naturally is helpful. The ancient Chinese got it right (as usual) with
the insight that success comes not from seeking perfection, but from
engaging with what is spoiled, harmed, injured, broken and truly in
need of the creative imagination of the human mind. Imagination is
creative when it does not forsake humanity because then it remains
undefeated because we have gone on trying, as T.S. Eliot put it.
Progress
Evidence for true progress came this year from ofcial recognition of
Gulf War Syndrome, thereby defeating the US governments two
decade long attempt to discredit this illness, which ruined the lives of
hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In fact, GWS is an extreme form of
*
I have included this article because it makes the following ones more intelligible.
With not a week now passing without the announcement of some totally absurd
study showing how multivitamins kill old ladies, vitamin E causes heart attacks,
vitamin C promotes kidney stones, and margarine reduces death from heart
attacks given this desperate attempt to keep drugs or some harmful food
industry in business, a historical overview, such as in this piece, can be helpful to
calm the nerves.
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (which was nally recognized last year
by Canadas Human Rights Court) caused primarily by certain pesti-
cides and pyridostigmine bromide. These were used in the rst Gulf
War, without the soldiers knowledge, in the misguided attempt to
protect them against specic types of nerve gas they were certain to
encounter in Iraqa true weapon of mass destruction made original-
ly in US biochemical war-fare labs (contrary to international treaties
forbidding its development) and sold to Sadam Hussain when he was
still a useful ally. The 400-page report produced by Boston Universitys
School of Public Health, released November 17, is a condemnation of
government policy, FDA collusion, medical ineptitude, and a soaring
endorsement of rst-rate science that relentlessly provided the truth
about this condition and how to treat it effectively (available on
http://sph.bu.edu/insider/racreport ).
Mercury amalgam, which became illegal in the 19th century and
mysteriously went into general use after World War II, ruining the
immune systems of millions, has nally been declared illegal in three
countries (Norway, Sweden and Denmark) with inescapable legal
implications throughout the European Union and the rest of the
world. Mercury amalgam started to be phased out in many countries
more than a decade ago. In the Netherlands, corpses cannot be cre-
mated or buried unless silver-lled teeth are removed rst to avoid
mercury vapor escaping into the environment. In North America,
more than 50% of all dentists no longer use it. In June, even the FDA
acknowledged it to be a serious neurotoxin.
In October, the US National Academy of Sciences published the
results of studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health show-
ing that Vitamin C slows cancer growth; it recognized that there is
also plenty of prior research showing that injected high dose vitamin
C starts a destructive chain reaction within the cancer cell and that
its therapeutic use signicantly decreases growth rates of ovarian,
pancreatic, and malignant brain tumors in mice; mice share the
same enzyme system with humans, and are therefore clinically signif-
icant. Good heavens! We might live long enough to see our cancer
hospitals use the Gerson Therapywith deadly results for the Cancer
Industry and cures at last for patients.
The University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center announced that
vitamin E levels make all the difference in the susceptibility to lung
cancer; high serum levels of E reduced the risk of lung cancer by 61%.
Having warned so many people against vaccines, especially, the
u shot, I was personally most gratied to learn that even the vener-
able British Medical Journal, the Archives of Internal Medicine, and the
Lancet no longer think it works; they observed that its use has no ben-
ecial effects at all, especially not for elderly people. No less than
11,000 serious adverse events, including deaths, were reported to the
FDA for the u vaccine in just one year.
Mainstream medicine made a signicant discovery in the eld of
antibiotic resistance. So-called superbugs are resistant even to the
drug of last resort, vancomycin. Rockefeller University developed a
new antibiotic called ceftobiprole which knocked out even the most
resistant bacterial strains (Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, August
2008). Let us hope and pray this drug is not too harmful to the liver
and wont be used in food-producing animals which would likely
make it, too, useless over time. Bacteria have so far always outsmart-
ed all human efforts, as Dr. Shiv Chopra describes in his fabulous new
book, Corrupt to the Core.
Canadas Supreme Court did us proud once again with a
November ruling against polluters who justify their behavior by
insisting they are in compliance with whatever the government pre-
tends are regulations. Some 2,000 Quebec City residents fought for
several decades to stop St. Lawrence Cement Inc. from wrecking their
air quality with toxic dust. Polluters must pay, said our top judges,
based on the effect of that pollution on the victim, rather than on
the conduct of the person who caused them. Holy smokes! Results
nally matter. This is an earthquake. Humanity may perhaps
become the measure of all things at last. I am looking forward to
many more polluters being made to face the fact that human health
takes precedence over corporate convenience.
In the same spirit, California passed legislation (AB 541) in
September which protects farmers against damages caused by genet-
ic pollution from GE crops. Now crop companies are liable for what-
ever damage their weird sci- stuff causes to natural plants and peo-
ple. Monsanto [and other GE companies]not farmersis legally
responsible for the economic, environmental, and health harms
caused by their patented and uncontrollable products, observed
Renate Brillinger, the director of the Genetic Engineering Policy
Project that initiated this legislation. Meanwhile, in Nelson, BC, resi-
dents declared their area GE free in November (www.gefreebc.org ).
How about the GTAand maybe the whole of Canadastarting the
same in 2009?
The High Court in the UK ordered the British government to make
the health needs of people the top priority when faced with pesticides
and found the UK policies governing these inadequate and scienti-
cally insupportable. This momentous decision, which government
cannot now ignore, was launched by one woman, Georgina Downs of
Chichester in West Sussex. She became ill from pesticides and now
has the highest court agree with her that the government acted
unlawfully and that the health of humans is not being protected, as
required by constitutional law.
If you are giving anybody a cell phone for Christmas, think about
this one: the European Parliament voted 522 to 16 to urge member
countries to impose stricter limits for exposure to radiation from
mobile and cordless phones because brain cancer rates have now
been clearly linked to their use, especially in children. Go to the web-
site of Prevent Cancer Now and learn more.
Revelations
Among the revelations 2008 provided, we nd that truth oozes out no
matter how heavy the lid placed on top. The misinformation about
the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil came out, so much so that the
UK government stopped supporting its use by public funds. The whole
story, written by Dr. James Howenstine, is available on www.laleva.org.
Health Canada nally posted the 9,749 adverse events and 27 deaths
(as of June 30) recorded in just North America alone on its website on
November 8 after no end of pestering from informed Canadians.
A report from the Institute of Safe Medication Practices showed
that the dangers associated with taking properly prescribed pharma-
ceutical drugs are up by 38% since last year, based on voluntary
reporting. Since the FDA estimates such reporting represents only 1-
2% of the actual damage, the true death toll could be as high as 2
million for just the rst three quarters of 2008. That makes car acci-
dent fatalities look like a minor irritation at merely 44,572 last year.
Read the full report available via www.naturalnews.com which pro-
vides information on specic drug classes. Take it to your doctor!
Another major truth came to stay when Alabamas Auburn
University published the data covering 110 years of nice, old-fash-
ioned rotation practices on a plot of land which is part of the
National Register of Historical Places. They found that, compared to
our current corporate rape of the soil, that plots higher organic mat-
ter results consistently in higher crop yields. (Details in Agronomy
Journal, vol. 100 (5), 2008).
McGill University published in the June 27 issue of the Journal of
the American College of Nutrition something we all suspected and
now nally know to be true: hospital food sucks and can kill, if the ill-
ness and the drugs dont do it rst. No less than 60% of hospitalized
patients had subnormal levels of vitamin C concentrations and 19%
were outright decient. The lead author was, not surprisingly, McGill
Universitys Professor John Hoffer, Dr. Abram Hoffers son.
What Lies Ahead
The Canadian Environmental Law Association has called upon our
Prime Minister and US President-Elect Barak Obama to x NAFTA,
specically its infamous Chapter 11, the Investment Chapter. In
August, Dow Chemicals division Agroscience sued Canada because
Quebec banned the pesticide 2,4-D because under Chapter 11 of
NAFTA it can do so. Hard to believe, but international investment
rights take precedence over the constitutional right to regulate pub-
lic health within Canada. Indeed, Chapter 11 may even take prece-
dence over our Supreme Court which has ruled on pesticides and the
right of municipalities to ban them in its famous Hudson Decision. In
the US, the same problems have arisen with NAFTA overruling State
and county legislation; an overwhelming number of US and
Canadian citizens want this section of NAFTA dropped in favor of
basic constitutional rights. This chapter of NAFTA is also what
allowed the Harper government to introduce bill C-51 in April with its
incomprehensible provision in Section 30. That denition of govern-
ment included foreign countries and foreign corporationswhich we
did not elect and on whose boards we do not sit! That is also why C-
51, which the new Harper government intends to bring back in
March 2009, also includes all sorts of provisions that water down or
outright eliminate safety provisions involving pharmaceuticals in
order to fast-track sales. It is vitally important that the consciousness
raising caused over this past summer by the C-51 battle is now going
to channel public energy to the source of this mess: NAFTA. We must
support CELA (www.cela.ca416-662-8341)
The second big project for the New Year has to do with the denial
of the Lyme Disease epidemic about which the Canadian Medical
Association informed the medical profession in the May 30, 2000,
issue of the CMAJ. Only outdated tests continue to be available with
up to 95% false negative results, leaving thousands of people untreat-
ed who, after an acute attack, become victims of Chronic Lyme which
mimic virtually all chronic illnesses. The Colleges, which control
Canadian doctors licenses, force their member doctors to adhere to
the equally outdated guidelines of the Infectious Disease Society of
America (IDSA). These guidelines were set aside in May of this year
by the Connecticut Attorney General because of the nding of sys-
temic fraud amongst the IDSAs panel members. These ndings
proved collusion with insurance companies, which dont want to pay
for chronically ill patients, pharmaceutical companies, and deliber-
ate exclusion of international scientic studies on Chronic Lyme. The
new panels chair is a famous medical ethicist, H. Brody (see his book
below). Doctors in Canada treating Lyme patients are as persecuted
as they were not too long ago when they dared to treat any form of
Environmental Illness.
The third big challenge has to do with the Charter of Health
Freedom which was authored by lawyer Shawn Buckley who also is
the president of the Natural Health Products Protection Association
(www.nhppa.org), a Canada-wide organization brought about as a
result of the battle against Bill C-51. It will require a couple of million
petition signatures to give natural health products their own govern-
ing legislation, similar to the way these products are regulated and
protected in the US through their law known as DESHA. Go to that
website and take part in the action as it unfolds. As long as Health
Canada controls the availability of natural health products along the
lines of the pharmaceutical model (with its assumption of toxicity),
medicine will remain monolithic, symptom-control oriented, and
authoritarian. Remember: all the dead bodies, adverse events, and
therapeutic failures are in that lucrative pharmaceutical drug-based
medicine.
The establishment of truth requires patient dedication and unshak-
able resolve to work on the spoiled for the sake of human values.
I
Breggin, P. R. & Cohen, D. Your Drug Maybe Your Problem: How and Why to
Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications, Perseus, 2007
Brody, H. Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession, and the Pharmaceutical
Industry, Rowman & Littleeld, 2007
Chopra, Shiv. Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower,
Kos, 2009 (519-927-1049)
Ferrie, Helke. What Part of No! Dont They Understand? Rescuing Food and
Medicine from Government Abuse, Kos, 2008. Now free for downloading from
www.helkeferrie.com
Michaels, D. Doubt Is Their Product: How Industrys Assault on Science
Threatens Your Health, Oxford, 2008
Weintraub, P. Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic, St. Martins Press,
2008
Subscribe to the free Orthomolecular Medicine News Service:
omns@orthomolecular.org
Medical Fraud
October 2012
Do you want it in brief?
Do you want it in depth?
Or totally true?
Gore Vidal, 19252012
When the roof and the foundations of a house begin to collapse, the
demolition guys get called in. Likewise, as the foundations of conven-
tional medicine begin to collapse, the medical demolition crews have
arrived. Within the last few years in medical science, what has hap-
pened is unprecedented: the leaders of mainstream medicinefar
more than its criticshave systematically uncovered the rot under-
neath the edice of standard medicine, and they are making it pub-
lic in leading journals and bestselling books. These medical demoli-
tion crews admit that they dont know what will come next, but
cleaning up the mess is more important to them than clinging to the-
ories and practices that are, well, rotten to the core.
In August 2005 an article appeared in PLoS, now the worlds
largest medical science journal (which does not permit drug advertis-
ing and has the most stringent conict-of-interest rules for authors),
entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. The
author, John Ioannidis, teaches medicine in Greece and the U.S. and
is known to North American medical students from JAMAevidence,
the bible for evidence-based clinical practice (his contributions to it
explain how to detect research fraud and bias). His 2005 article
began: There is increasing concern that most current published
research ndings are false claimed research ndings may often be
simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. Not surprisingly,
this red up the demolition crews.
If Ioannidis is correct, what are professors teaching medical stu-
dents and do they even know if what they are teaching is true? Can
practice guidelines be trusted at all? Has continuing medical educa-
tion become an oxymoron? What illusory standards of practice are
medical regulatory authorities, such as the provincial colleges for
physicians, pretending to uphold under the laws governing them? Is
it even safe for patients to trust any information doctors provide?
What about informed consent, given that those consenting and those
providing healthcare are possibly equally clueless? And who is respon-
sible for this mess? Most importantly, what will it take to clean this up?
The usual suspectsBig Pharma and governmenthave been
working hand-in-hand for years to convince the public that pharma-
ceutical medicine is safe and effective. But now renewed scientic
investigation of Big Pharmas fraudulent claims about their products
has appeared in mainstream journals and can no longer be ignored.
The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
(CAPE) staged a mock funeral in July in front of the parliament build-
ings in Ottawa to draw attention to the death of evidence in sci-
encekilled, they assert, by government. Some 2,000 Canadian scien-
tists accompanied the cofn. In the U.K., such a mock funeral was also
held with the dramatic splendor only the land of Shakespeare can pro-
duce: magnicently adorned, purple-draped black horses pulled a cof-
n in a hearse that would have been t for Queen Victorias funeral.
In both countries, scientists accuse their governments of control-
ling research funds to serve market interests only. CAPEs list of indict-
ments included the Harper governments attack on environmental
protection which is the same thing as attacking public health. Bill C-
38, the infamous Omnibus Budget Bill which recently passed into
law, includes exemptions for pest control products so they are no
longer listed as poisonous or harmful. It also removed the safety
requirements that previously limited agricultural chemicals and vet-
erinary drugs to specied safe levels in food. And C-38 also handed
Big Pharma a blank cheque by permitting prescription drugs to
bypass important regulatory hurdles. With this Bill, the government
is obviously sending a message that the health of Canadians should
not get in the way of corporate prot.
The Harper governments worst attack was on scientic integrity
when the federal medical research funding agency, the Canadian
Institute for Health Research (CIHR), dropped its internationally
praised transparency requirement for full public disclosure of the
details of drug trial results. The CIHR was merely three months old
when the requirement suddenly disappeared, and with it any hope
Canadians might have had to nd out just how effective and safe our
medicines actually areas opposed to what the marketing hype tells
us. This decision caused an uproar around the world. The British
Medical Journal called it tragic because clearly the CIHR has decided
that its going to put the interests of patients behind those of industry.
Thanks to the Harper government, our bodies are now open for busi-
nessready to be plundered for prot, the same as our environment.
Research, Scientists, And PoliticiansAll Bought And Paid For
A May 10, 2012 editorial in Nature identied the poison of the prof-
it motive as corroding public trust. Almost all research is funded
by Big Pharma, which also controls all the data as proprietary infor-
mation, providing only summaries of trial results to the regulators,
e.g. Health Canada and the FDA, who are thus never in full posses-
sion of all the facts. Big Pharma also has the right to publish only
favorable results. Independent critical review of the original trial
data, to verify claimed results, only happens when researchers and
clinicians who cannot be bought take extraordinary trouble through
freedom-of-information legislation and hunt down the data, or do
their own meticulous research into the patterns of medication effects,
to ferret out the truth hidden by the spin.
This Nature editorial commented that Ioannidis 2005 observa-
tions had by now become the norm: Like a magnetic eld that pulls
iron lings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning mul-
tiple sources of scientic bias in the same direction [creating] the
appearance of progress. The rst step is to face up to the problem
before the cracks undermine the very foundations of science. (As a
side note: The Obama administration passed a stringent conict-of-
interest law, effective since August, affecting bio-medical researchers
in an attempt to keep them honest.)
Not only do North American regulators not regulate in the public
interest, they assist Big Pharma against the public interest. The latest
amazing revelation is that the U.S. FDA systematically spied on its
own staff, lawyers, members of Congress, and the media to identify
those critical of a pharmaceutical compound and in danger of going
public. When the agencys 80,000 espionage documents were acci-
dentally published on the Internet, those spied-upon FDA scientists
started legal action against their employer. This case is going to
become very interesting because it is likely to put the spotlight on a
lot of drugs and vaccines that have killed a lot of unsuspecting peo-
ple already.
Sea Change?
Consider the following list of recent developments in medicine, all of
which, signicantly, came to light because of outrage in the main-
stream medical world:
As reported in March, a team of 100 scientists tried to replicate
the results of 53 of the most widely cited landmark cancer research
papers. This re-analysis resulted in only 6 research studies being val-
idatedthe rest are bogus. Shockingly, this was not Pharma-generat-
ed junk science, but came from university researchers who misled
companies wanting to use their research for new cancer drugs.
Indeed, there is no honour among thieves.
Lancet Oncology reported that cancer incidence is predicted to rise
by at least 75% by 2030 wherever westernized lifestyles prevail, as
measured by the Human Development Index (i.e. the more devel-
oped, the more cancer). The steady rise in breast cancer is well known,
as are its major causes: pesticides and chemical hormone replace-
ment therapy. And another cause of protable abuse of women,
known since the mid-1990s, comes from breast screening programs
that supposedly provide the benet of early detectiona myth which
is no longer even supported by the Radiology Society of North
America. In fact, the more screening done by mammography, the
more radiation-related cancer incidence and the more false-positive
results leading to unnecessary surgery.One big surprise is that even
the ultra-conservative Institute of Medicine (IOM) acknowledges the
increased risk of cancer caused by unnecessary mammography. The
IOM went further and launched a frontal attack on Big Pharma. In
the spirit of its motto, Advising the nationimproving health, the
IOM published a position paper in May that outlines how the U.S.
FDA should proceed to make drugs safer before approval, and moni-
tor them after getting to market, so new drugs dont continue being
lucrative human toxicity trials.
The most reliable and truly independent watchdog of medical
research is the international Cochrane Collaboration. One of its
members, Dr. Peter Gtzsche, published a book this year exposing
fraudulent claims about the benets of mammography, which
became evident after 10 years of research analyzing the data involv-
ing millions of women. He concludes: The collective denial and mis-
representation of facts and the little benet there is of screening, if
any, coupled with the disregard of the principles for informed consent
and national laws, may be the biggest ethical scandal ever in health-
care. Hundreds of millions of women have been seduced into attend-
ing [mammography] screening without knowing it could harm them.
This violation of their human rights is the main reason we have done
so much research on mammography screening and also why I have
written this book.
After a two-year delay, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez amazing book,
What Went Wrong: The Truth Behind the Clinical Trial of the Enzyme
Treatment of Cancer, is now available. It shows how the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) systematically torpedoed the clinical trial of
Gonzalez enzyme therapy, which was already previously document-
ed to be successful even for pancreatic cancer. Enzyme therapy is
healing and thereby proves that chemo is unnecessary; chemo drugs,
while apparently at rst effective because tumors shrink, are them-
selves carcinogenic and as such cancer promoting time bombs in the
patients body.
This book is of great value to cancer patients, enabling them to
understand why and how enzyme therapy works. Readers will also
learn how the NIH sabotaged the potentially healing enzyme proto-
cols (which resulted in death for dozens of trial participants), to
ensure the appearance of failure for enzyme therapy. An investiga-
tion later revealed that the NIH members involved had personal
nancial interests in chemotherapy drugs. Enzyme therapy proves
chemo to be ineffective in the long run because these drugs are them-
selves future carcinogenic time bombs in the patients body.
For many years, being sued for drug damages was simply an addi-
tional business expense for Big Pharma. No longer! This year,
GlaxoSmithKline has to pay out $3 billion for the harm caused by
antidepressants Paxil, Seroxat, Wellbutrin, and the diabetes drug
Avinda; injured patients and families of those who died are now also
able to sue individually.
Merck, still recovering from the multi-billion dollar Vioxx scandal
that cost hundreds of thousand of lives, is being sued by whistleblow-
ers from among their scientists for deceiving the FDA about the
mumps vaccine which was falsely alleged to be 95% effective. In fact,
health authorities in North America are reporting increasingly high-
er incidence of mumps only in vaccinated children.
At Roche, a whole product line hit the fan in Europe this July:
Avastin, Farceva, Rituxan, Alteplase, Actemra, Pegasys, Lucentis,
Raptiva, and also Herceptin, which is supposed to prevent recurrence
of breast cancer. Roche failed to report and deal with more than
15,000 deaths and over 65,000 adverse event reports related to all of
the above, along with their hep B vaccine, one side effect of which can
be liver cell death.
Pzer has to pay out $45 million for damage done by its
menopause drug Pempro. This drug was prescribed to six million
women even though the Womens Health Initiative study of 2002
proved that Premarin (the estrogenic HRT) and synthetic progesterone
alone or in combination increase the risk of cancer and blood clots.
Medical rights activist in India, Anand Rai, found that 2,061
deaths were caused in clinical trials, between 2008 and 2011, but only
22 were compensated. Big Pharma outsources its trials increasingly to
reduce costs and avoid scrutiny. India also halted a Gardasil vaccine
study after six children died.
In a striking parallel to the way Big Tobacco nally became vul-
nerable to legal challenge, patients have launched a class action suit,
with the support of the UK government, against various medical
authorities for making them into lifelong addicts to Valium.
This veritable hailstorm of protest and legal action is beginning to
be matched by positive work also coming from mainstream medicine.
The World Health Organization announced that the use of mercury
in vaccines, dental restoration, and all other medicines must be
phased outover the fervent objections by dental associations and
worst of all, from the American Pediatric Association which continues
to insist that mercury in vaccines is just ne.
Similarly, the European Union is about to pass legislation requir-
ing an unprecedented cleanup of Europes water supply from contam-
ination by birth control pills, at the estimated starting cost of 30 bil-
lion Euros. Canadian research in 2001 showed that, at 5 parts per tril-
lion, these drug residues cause sh stock collapse in lakes. The safe
limit the EU must achieved is 0.035 parts per trillion.
Prominent doctors are increasingly objecting to redefining
patients as customers. Drs Groopman and Hartzband of Harvard
wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that reducing medicine
to economics makes a mockery of the bond between the healer and
the sick. For centuries, doctors who were mercenary were publicly cas-
tigated. Such doctors betrayed their calling. Should we now be cele-
brating the doctor whose practice, like a successful business, maxi-
mizes prots from customers?
The total truth has perhaps never before been spoken so force-
fully. This can only be good.
I
J. P. A. Ioannidis, Why most Published Research Findings are False, PLoS, Aug.
1, 2005. This is one of the rst research efforts to expose the underlying fraud
or massaging of date or absence of data in medicine. Dr. Ioannidis is also a key
author and co-editor of the latest version of the Manual of Evidence Based
Medicine published by the Journal of the American Medical Association,
JAMAevidence, used in North American medical schools. JAMAevidence: Users
Guide to the Medical LiteratureA Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Practice,
Second Edition, McGraw Hill, current edition.
On www.GreenMedInfo.com and Best Pills Worst Pills you get the full
information on the known safety and effectiveness on any drug currently in use.
These sites are the ultimate No Bull zones; the rst gives direct access to all
the published literatureno summaries, only facts.
The National Post reported the changes to the transparency regulations of the
CIHR on May 29, 2011 by Tom Blackwell. Go to NHPPAs Discussion Paper on
Bill C-38, June 21, 2012, showing how the Harper government snuck into the
Omnibus Bill Big Pharma-friendly provisions scrapping accountability.
N. J. Gonzalez MD, What Went Wrong: The Truth behind the Clinical Trial of the
Enzyme Treatment of Cancer, New Spring Press, 2012
The sources for the mammography facts are: How a charity oversells
mammography by S. Woloshin and L. M. Schwartz, British Medical Journal, Vol.
345, 8/2/12, August 2, 2012.
The book by the Cochrane Collaboration member Peter Gtzsche,
Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy, appeared in March
2012, published in the UK by Radcliffe; available on amazon.com. More detailed
information on radiation from mammography causing cancer is found in S.
Epstein, The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, Macmillan, 1997. The cautions
expressed about mammography by the Radiological Society of North America
(RSNA)were published in ScienceDaily on December 10, 2010, following the
RSNA expert panel resolutions of December 2. For more reliable and non-
invasive methods of early cancer detection check out thermography and
ultrasound screening clinics in Canada on goggle.
M. Guarneri MD, The Science of Natural Healing, 2012, a 24-hour lecture series
on audio CD by The Teaching Company (1-800-832-2412) on nutritional
medicine by the founder of the prestigious Scripps Center for Integrative
Medicine. Highly recommended!
Free from www.mercola.com the 2011 report The FDA Exposed; FDA drug
approvals automatically apply to Canada and both are, by law, responsible to the
drug companies, not to the citizens of their countries.
The World Health Organizations press release on the phase-out of mercury
dental amalgam and all uses of mercury in medicine was dated October 11,
2011. For dentists trained in non-toxic dentistry google International Academy
for Oral and Medical Toxicology. For the details on how the dental and pediatric
associations vehemently support mercury in dentistry and vaccines and fought
to WHO, got to the website called JuriMed run by Tim Bolen.
The Institute of Medicines report on the lack of safety in drug approvals was
published May 2012 on their website and is entitled Ethical and Scientic
Issues in Studying the safety of Approved Drugs. On the mock funerals held for
science in Canada and the UK see Nature, August 2, 2012 editorial and article
by A. Bhattacharya. For details on the Canadian mock funeral before Ottawas
parliament buildings go to the website of CAPE (Canadian Association of
Physicians for the Environment)
R. Owen & S. Jobling, The hidden costs of exibility on the multi-billion dollar
cleanup of water from birth control pills, Nature, May 24, 2012. The research
showing how birth control pills compromise water quality and make it deadly for
sh is at K. A. Kidd et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA,
vol. 104, pp. 8897 ff, 2007
On the FDA spying on its own scientists and the legal action taken by them see
editorial in Nature, July 26, 2012 and article by M. Wadman page 416. On
September 6, 2012, Natures editorial demanded that the new conict-of-
interest rules, which became law in August 2012 in the US for bio-medical
researchers, must be available for public scrutiny on the internet to be
meaningful. J. Neuman et al., Prevalence of nancial conicts of interest among
panel members producing clinical practice guidelines in Canada and the United
States: cross sectional study, British Medical Journal, vol. 343, 2011. The Nature
editorial on how all of science has become undermined by the poison of prot
motive was published May 10, 2012 p. 149. Nature, August 2, 2012, has two
editorials on the need for transparency of all industry-generated data.
For the story about the fraud pertaining to Alzheimers research by Harvard
Medical School researchers now being criminally prosecuted see www.omsj.org,
May 2012
The $ 3 billion ne imposed on GlaxoSmithKline for fraud involving deaths and
harm from antidepressants Paxil, Seroxat, Wellburin and the diabetes drug
Avinda was reported in many places; my source was the Daily Mail, UK online
version in July 2012. A detailed analysis is found on Dr. Mercolas website.
The story of the whistleblower scientists from Merck on the fraudulent claims
made for the mumps vaccine and the legal action initiated by the insurance
company Chatom Primary Care, see Natural News June 28, 2012 where the
relevant links are provided.
The story about Roche hiding some 15,000 deaths and more than 65,000
adverse events from various drugs manufactured by Roche see Daily Mail, UK
online July 9, 2012. The drugs involved are: the cancer drug Herceptin, the eye
medication Lucentis, the hepatitis B vaccine, Avastin, Tarceva, Rituxan, Alteplase,
Actemra, Pegasys, Raptiva. To nd out if you are taking the North American
version of any of these, google this British drug name and the Canadian/US
brand name will come up too. See Dr. Mercolas website, September 2,2012, on
the thousands of deaths during clinical trial outsourced to India.
See One Click Group with sources from Bloomberg, January 9, 2012 on the
court ordering Pzer to pay out $ 45 million for its drug Prempro for having
caused cancer in many women; it is a combination of the original Premarin and
synthetic progesterone Provera; Premarin is known since the 2002 Womens
Health Initiative study to be carcinogenic; the protective claims originally made
for Premarin were fraudulent. NOTE: only bioidentical hormones are safe
google for literature.
The class action suite against doctors who kept prescribing Valium, which made
tens of thousands of people addicts, began in December 2011. See One Click
Group Dec. 30, 2011.
Regarding the Hep B vaccine killing liver cells making it potentially very toxic,
see the studies published and referenced at www.vaccineliberationarmy.com
On cancer incidence expected to rise by 75% by 2030 due to lifestyle and
environmental problems, see the online edition of the Lancet Oncology, May
May 31, 2012. See One Click Group for the info and sources (including Nature,
March 28,, 2012) on the fact that only 6 of the currently most important 53
cancer research papers could be reproduced; the rest are unreliable and
probably based on fraud.
The New England Journal of Medicine, October 12, 2011, had an excellent
article by Dr. Jerome Groopman on how medicine has become reduced to
economics. See his excellent book How Doctors Think, Houghton Mifin, 2007
Toxic Psychiatry
November 2012
The battle against polypharmacy, or the use of a large number of
drugs (the action of which we know little, yet we put them into the
bodies ... the action of which we know less), has not been fought to
the nish. Do not use rashly every new product of which the peri-
patetic siren sings. Consider what surprising reactions may occur in
the laboratory from the careless mixing of unknown substances. Be
as considerate of your patient and yourself as you are of the test-tube.
Sir William Osler (18491919)
About 20% of the North American population is now on psychiatric
drugs for either depression, ADHD, anxiety, schizophrenia, phobias,
impulse-control disorder, or bi-polar disorder. North Americans con-
sume multiple uppers and downers and mysterious mood stabiliz-
ers, to the tune of $25 billion annually. These are prescribed by doc-
tors who are either deceived by the manufacturers of those drugs or
who are complicit with Big Pharmas business model. Most prescribers
know very little about pharmacology and almost none have any
training in toxicology. Big Pharma tosses 87% of their annual $58 bil-
lion marketing budget at doctors, starting in medical school where
94% of psychiatrists-in-training have accepted gifts from Big Pharma
by their third year.
Big Pharmas top sellers are psychiatric drugs used to treat condi-
tions codied in the current edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical
Manual (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr.
Marcia Angell, professor of public policy at Harvard and former inter-
im editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, observes:
This Bible of psychiatry, like the real Bible, is dependent a lot on
something akin to revelation. There are no citations of scientic stud-
ies to support its decisions; the diagnoses described in it are arrived
at in secret, behind closed doors, by vote only, and are not backed up
by any references to objective scientic ndingstestable and veri-
able material.
As psychiatric drug sales keep rising, and psychiatrists tell us that
46% of the American population now t at least one of the criteria in
the DSM-IV, Angell asked: What is going on here? What about the
drugs? Do they work? If they do, shouldnt we expect the prevalence
of mental illness to be declining, not rising? She then examined the
pervasive intellectual morass and corporate-controlled scientific
fraud on which modern psychiatry is based. It was best illustrated
with the help of a graph published in Nature recently, showing the
sky-rocketing increases in nes that pharmaceutical companies have
paid since 2006 for the harm their blockbuster drugs have caused.
The nes are now in the billions of dollars.
The drugs prescribed by psychiatrists are backed by manufacturer-
sponsored clinical trials, a business worth $30 billion annually; the
industry keeps all the resulting data secret, protected by current
patent law from the critical intellects of independent reviewers. Most
are scientic trials in appearance, but in reality they are controlled by
marketing departments; as such the blind lead the blindgiving a
whole new meaning to the idea of a double-blind study, observes Dr.
David Healy, a UK professor of psychiatry and pharmacology and
outspoken critic of psychiatry. According to him, Evidence-based
medicine has become evidence-biased medicine so that we are
quite literally taking pills to save the lives of companies who have the
greater interest in the vitality of the diseases they market drugs for
than in our well-being.
And what about the doctors involved? Marketing departments
armed with off-prints of those company-controlled studies work
aggressively to inuence the doctors prescribing habits; most doctors
believe what they are told and prescribe as they are told. Healy states:
The idea that most doctors have been body-snatched and replaced
by someone working for a faceless marketing department seems at
rst inconceivable to most people, the germ perhaps of an amusing
idea for a television series.
Medicine as we know it is at deaths door, writes Healy in his lat-
est book Pharmageddon. In it, he shows how the pharmaceutical
industry has hijacked clinical medical practice, research, and the gov-
ernmental regulatory systems to serve their business objectives, there-
by doing far more harm than good for patients. The most tragic vic-
tims of all are children who are prescribed toxic psychiatric drugs now
known to cause brain damage and the risk of sudden death. For chil-
dren, especially those in foster care, the concept of informed consent
has become meaningless.
On October 4 of this year, at the annual convention of the
American Psychiatric Association, Healy told his colleagues you are
committing professional suicide, comparing their relationship to
industry with the Vaticans attempts to suppress child sex abuse scan-
dals instead of dealing with the problem. He told his fellow psychia-
trists, backed by the most compelling international research he had
published in a series of books, youve been fooled by industry. The
key conict is whether people are hiding the data from you. One
example involved Zyprexa which has the highest suicide rate in clin-
ical trial historyinformation which was totally hidden from regu-
lators and prescribers. Indeed, as reported by AdverseEvents Inc.
(www.adverseevents.com) in March of this year, the worst adverse
events are brain-related side effects caused by the best-selling psychi-
atric drugs.
The Party Is Over
There are four classes of drugs used in psychiatry:
1) antidepressants (e.g. Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, Celexa);
2) anti-anxiety meds (e.g. Lorazopam/Ativan, Valium);
3) antipsychotics (e.g. Chlorpromazine, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Haldol,
Risperdal, Abilify);
4) stimulants (e.g. Ritalin, Concerta).
The proof is now in, provided by critical-thinking researchers sup-
ported by brain-imaging technology, that drugs, especially those used
to treat schizophrenia and stimulants used for ADHD, actually shrink
the brain. Who would have thought that MRIs would give concrete
reality to the term shrink!
In 1989, Nancy Andreasen, professor of psychiatry and then edi-
tor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, foundthrough a
longitudinal study combined with brain scansthat anti-psychotic
drugs shrank the frontal lobes of schizophrenics and thus made recov-
ery impossible. In 2008 she observed, The more drugs you have been
given, the more brain tissue you lose.... The pre-frontal cortex doesnt
get the input it needs and is being shut down by the drug. That
reduces the psychotic symptoms. It also causes the prefrontal cortex
to slowly atrophy.
Children, if taken off Ritalin, do have a chance to recover the use
of their brains, as psychiatrist Peter Breggin has shown with his with-
drawal protocols. Breggin, often referred to as the conscience of psy-
chiatry, is credited with stopping the return of frontal lobotomy sur-
gery, and other forms of psychosurgery, and acted as expert witness
for more than a hundred legal actions against manufacturers of anti-
depressants. He explains that Ritalin causes children to become
abnormal: the crushing of spontaneous behaviour and the enforce-
ment of compulsive, over-focused behaviour is actually [not] an
improvement. Its a form of brain dysfunction, and long-term it caus-
es permanent abnormalities in the brain and suppresses growth. That
is a dreadful thing to do to children. While serious behaviour prob-
lems can be very real and disrupting, most can be attributed to intol-
erances to specic foods, and/or articial food additives, or sensitivi-
ties/allergies to pervasive chemicals in the environment.
In 1965, Joseph Schildkraut suggested that depression might be
caused by a lack of the neurotransmitters serotonin and epinephrine;
this is the catecholamine hypothesis of affective disordertodays
chemical imbalance myth. Then, in 1969, followed the dopamine
hypothesis. By the mid-1970s it was clear there was not a shred of
evidence to support either theory, and psychiatry abandoned it. Yet
Healy describes howby the late 1980sthe marketing departments
of SmithKline Beecham (as it was then), Eli Lilly, and Pzer revived
this theory to sell Paxil, Zoloft, and Prozac: In fact, mindless patter
about restoring chemical imbalances did a great deal to make SSRIs
most protable from 1990 onward. Referring to the ood of com-
pany-sponsored and controlled trials designed to help support such
myths, Healy wonders if such spin can ever be overcome by real
data, because myths always have the last word.
Psychiatric Drugs And Chronic Disease Risk
On January 23 of this year, on NPRs Morning Edition, leading psy-
chiatrists admitted that the chemical imbalance theory is baseless,
and FDA regulators stated that this theory was really just a
metaphor. However, this metaphor is the rationale used for pre-
scribing articial chemicals which are totally foreign and toxic to the
bodyand this truly ass-backwards logic insists that proof for those
chemical imbalances is the presence of depression, anxiety, suicidal
despair, grief, or rage.
Thanks to Irving Kirsch, who spent 15 years studying the entire
database, published and unpublished, on antidepressant drugs, we
now know that (through the skillful avoidance of long-term studies)
none of the aforementioned drugs are better than placebo. Further-
more, the psychiatric drugs have undeniable and unacceptable side
effects and virtually no helpful effect. All carry the increased risk of
diabetes, cancer, irreversible neuro-motor damage, worsening depres-
sion, insomnia, loss of sex drive, suicide, and homicidal behaviour.
Last December, the Prozac defence was upheld in a Manitoba court
for a teenager who killed his friend while under the effects of the drug.
The biological evidence was so solid that the case was not appealed.
James Gottstein, a lawyer and activist for psychiatric patients
rights who works especially for the right of children to be medication-
free, states that antidepressants should really be renamed on the
basis of the currently available evidence and be called antiaphro-
disiac medication, agitation enhancers, insomnia inducers,
suicidality inducers, mania stimulators, or gas busters. This last
one applies because these drugs can cause serious gastrointestinal
problems when interfering with serotonin which regulates the bowels.
He admits that such re-naming would not offer the same marketing
appeal.
Worst of all, babies have double the rate of usually fatal heart
abnormalities when born to mothers on SSRIseven if the mother
discontinued them up to nine months prior to becoming pregnant.
SSRIs, like Prozac, are now especially known to cause epigenetic dam-
age; this is harm done to the next generations DNA building and
repair mechanisms by inheriting the mothers disturbed metabolic
signals caused by the toxicity of antidepressants. Until now, epigenet-
ic damage has only been known to occur from pesticides which pre-
dispose the fetus to cancer.
Healy observes with wry British humor that if Pharma made cars,
the seat-belt warning signs would be removed and the accelerator
would be re-engineered so that the only options were travel at the
upper end of the speed limit or faster. However, ever since the tobac-
co industry was successfully challenged, we have the odd situation
that if Philip Morris made medicines, all available drugs would
come with prominent Black Box warnings stating that this drug can
kill there would be a ban on all advertising, and the use of drugs
would be severely restricted for children. He suggests doctors should
think like pilots who know that if they make a mistake they get killed
along with their passengers.
The Rescuers
Psychiatric illness is a terrible medical reality; people can suffer para-
lyzing depression, frightening hallucinations, or disabling ashbacks
to horric traumas suffered in the past. Robert Whitaker discovered in
his research, while working as publications director for Harvard
Medical School, that highly successful drugless methods, based on
empathy and the provision of a protective environment, had been
developed by leading psychiatrist whose published results were based
on highly successful long-term outcome studies. Alas, empathy can-
not be patented and when prot is the guiding motive, the demon-
strated and published excellence of psychotherapy and its unques-
tioned superiority in the long term is easily dismissed.
Parallel with the rise of Big Pharmas psychiatry we nd, however,
also the research of psychiatrist Dr. Abram Hoffer and those great
doctors and researchers who developed the truly healing protocols of
orthomolecular medicine, among them Theron Randolph, Linus
Pauling, David Horrobin. Hoffer was encouraged by then Premier of
Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas, to try his nutrition- and vitamin-
based therapies for especially schizophrenia patientsand emptied
out that provinces asylums. Hoffers randomized, double-blind con-
trolled trials documenting his successful methods (75% better than
drugs) were published and are discussed in his scientic memoir.
The newly published revelations about the prot-mediated harm
psychiatry is capable of come from clinicians Irving Kirsch, David
Healy, Joseph Glenmullen, Peter Breggin, and Grace Jackson and oth-
ers in the research community. Indeed, if ever the truth is capable of
making people free, these dissenting researchers provide accessible
road maps to mental health freedom with the help of withdrawal pro-
tocols that can return patients to the re-possession of their mental
and emotional lives.
I
M. Angell, The New York Review of Books: The Epidemic of Mental Illness:
Why?, June 23, 2011. Google will get you to the series of articles as well as to
her Yutube lectures at various medical schools. Her information is the best
introduction into the problem and valuable because condemnation of psychiatric
drugs (and for all the right mainstream reasons) from somebody as thoroughly
mainstream as the long-time editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of
Medicine carries so much weight, that any psychiatrist faced with it, is in trouble.
Download it and take it to your doctors!
The National Post ran the article on the Prozac Defense on December 7,
2011, by Tom Blackwell. For all the other known cases of mass murders by
people on psychiatric drugs or just coming off them, go to www.ssristories.com
David Healys observations about psychiatry committing professional suicide
come from his address to the American Psychiatric Association on October 4,
2012 and were reported in the international media. Google: David Healy +
American Psychiatric Association 2012
D. Healy, Pharmageddon, California University Press, 2012
R. Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Broadway, 2010. The story of
antidepressants from the perspective of patients. This book includes the highly
valuable information on the rigorous research that showed, and still shows, that
psychotherapy is without fail always superior in outcomes to drugs.
Website: Mad In America. This is Robert Whitakers site on which once a week
an article by Dr. David Healy is featured on a psychiatric drug, issues of toxicity,
fraud, withdrawal etc. in addition to weekly updates on legal issues involving
drugs, marketing etc. The citations from David Healy on what would happen if
Big Pharma made cars etc. are posted on that website.
I. Kirsch, The Emperors New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, Basic
Books, 2010. Kirsch and his team spent 15 years researching especially the
unpublished, suppressed, trial results and analyzed the effectiveness of all
antidepressants after excluding those that were proven to be fraudulent. The
result: none are better than placebo but very toxic, unlike placebo.
A. Cassels, Seeking SicknessMedical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for
Disease, Keystone 2012. Prof. Cassels teaches at the University of British
Columbia and has here compiled the information showing how testing is used as
a marketing tool by Big Pharma, also for especially psychiatric drugs.
Dr. J. Glenmullen, a psychiatrist at Harvard medical school, was among the very
rst to blow the whistle on Prozac in his now famous book Prozac Backlash,
Touchstone, 2001.
G.E. Jackson, Drug-Induced DementiaA Perfect Crime, AuthorHouse, 2009
David Healy, The Antidepressant Era, Harvard University Press, 1997. History of
these drugs and their evolution into lifestyle drugs marketed like a consumer
good.
David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, Harvard University Press,
2002. Professor Healy is a practicing psychiatrist as well as a professor of
pharmacology in the UK and provides here a history of the entire eld.
David Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac, Lorimer, Toronto, 2004. This book caused
the FDA to put warnings on Prozac packaging about increase of suicides from
SSRIs.
David Healy, ManiaA Short History of Bipolar Disorder, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2009. Bipolar is the avor of the year now for psychiatry and
Healy shows here how it evolved out of the side effects resulting from the
toxicity of psychiatric drugs.
Katherine Sharpe, Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants cheered us
up, let us down, and changed who we are, Harper, 2012. A young womans
story of how her life was wrecked as a university student when the counseling
department put her on Zoloft. Foreword by David Healy.
Gary Greenberg, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern
Disease, Simon & Schuster, 210. A psychotherapists perspective based on
treating and rescuing antidepressant-poisoned patients.
CPS (Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties) current edition, found in
every doctors ofce, in every pharmacy, and free online. It is updated and
published annually by the manufacturers of all drugs currently on the market
and is required by law to provide the information on each drug including
toxicity, side-effects, withdrawal problems, addiction issues etc. For some reason
doctors seem to prescribe these drugs without rst reading what manufacturers
openly admit to!
R. Pelton & J. Lavalle, The Nutritional Cost of Prescription Drugs, Morton, 2004.
This book is published in its large format for doctors by the American
Association of Pharmacists (whose business it is to sell drugs!) to show what you
can do to prevent damage to yourself. This book is available on amazon.com
and is not up to date (go to Peter Breggin and orthomolecular doctors for that)
but provides an excellent overview of the issues; the information on most
currently available drugs is still correct, but far more has been published since.
Resources For Coming Off Psychotropics:
Joan Matthews Larson, Depression-Free Naturally, Ballantine, available on ama-
zon.com. You can watch her lectures on how to withdraw from antidepressants on
Yutube as well. This book gives the treatment protocols for people coming off anti-
depressants as developed by Dr. Abram Hoffer and the current orthomolecular
strategies. Here is the result of three decades of clinical experience. Dr. Larsen is
familiar to EXPO attendees as she was in Toronto some years ago.
Dr. Joseph Glenmullen also published a very user-friendly book to assist patients
with coming off psychiatric drugs. Even though published in 2005, it is as up to
date as can be because the drugs themselves have not changed: The
Antidepressant Solution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming
Antidepressant Withdrawal, dependence and Addiction, Free Press, 2005
Julia Ross, The Mood Cure, Penguin, available through amazon.com. Explains the
biochemical workings in the brain in the presence of drugs vs essential nutrients
through her clinical practice. Very helpful for people with mood disorders trying
to avoid going on pharmaceutical drugs in the rst place.
G. E. Jackson, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide to Informed Consent,
Authorhouse, 2005
Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, The Antidepressant Solution, Free Press also from
amazon.com.
David.Healy@rxisk.org For withdrawal protocols and the details of how these
toxic drugs were developed and fraudulently marketed, and how medical
associations and governments became complicit with the marketing agenda.
Essential reading for anybody using these drugs as you learn the facts about
each specic drug.
P. Breggin, Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists,
Patients, and their Families, Springer 2013. Go to psychiatricdrugfacts@hotmail.com
and www.bregging.com: the single most valuable guide to facts about drug
toxicity and safe withdrawal protocols for each. Dr. Breggin was the expert
witness in antidepressant trials in more than 100 cases and is an expert in
toxicology.
Abram Hoffer, Adventures in PsychiatryThe Scientic Memoirs, Kos Publishing,
2005. Here is the story of how psychiatry divided into drugs on the one hand
and orthomolecular medicine on the other. Invaluable for those seeking help.
Available through the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine: 416-
733-2117
Phyllis A. Balch, Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 5th edition. This excellent
guide provides the information on what each nutrient actually does in the body
and why it is essential to all the known metabolic processes.
Since most cases of depression have underlying emotional trauma, contact
EMDR International (google) for EMDR-trained health professionals in your area.
EMDR specializes on the treatment of emotional trauma, especially PTSD (post-
traumatic stress disorder).
Highly recommended is the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
www.orthomed.org
Critique by Marvin Ross January 22/13
While Ms Ferrie is correct that prescriptions are overused in medicine
(Psychiatric Drugs Linked to Chronic Disease and Malpractice), there
are many inaccuraciesfar too many to address in this short rebut-
tal so I would like to focus on the most egregious.
Patients demand a quick pharmaceutical x from their doctors
and often demand antidepressants (and antibiotics) when these are
not appropriate. Ms Ferrie is correct that these are overused but there
are real and quite serious psychiatric disorders that are alleviated
with medications.
Studies show that antidepressants are statistically better than
placebo and the effect increases with the severity of symptoms (Mind
the Brain Blog, Dec, 2012). A June 2012 study concluded that antide-
pressants reduced suicidal thoughts and behaviour (referenced in my
Hufngton Post Blog, January 15, 2013).
That these drugs, like everything ingested, have side effects is not
surprising. Take too much vitamin C and develop diarrhea. Not stop
your ginkgo biloba before surgery and you will bleed excessively. Side
effects for everything need to be evaluated against positive outcomes.
I took particular exception to Ms Ferries discussion of schizophre-
nia and antipsychotics. This is the most serious of the mental illness-
es and in almost all cases, antipsychotics are needed for life to control
symptoms. It is not the only treatment but it is the foundation. Ms
Ferrie quotes Dr. Nancy Andreasen from 2008 saying these medica-
tions cause brain tissue loss. She was likely referring to a Sept 15, 2008
interview in the New York Times and Andreasen said, My biggest fear
is that people who need the drugs will stop taking them while noting
sensibly, these drugs have to be used at the lowest possible dose.
In a 2011 paper, Andreasen stressed that brain abnormalities are
already present at disease onset and this is conrmed in 2012 by
McMaster Universitys Dr Robert Zipursky. He found changes in the
brain present before any medication was given. Deterioration, he
added, can result from cannabis and tobacco use this applies to
everyoneand those with schizophrenia tend to be heavy smokers. A
sedentary lifestyle and stress also reduce brain volumes in everyone.
Zipursky added that those who discontinue medication early have
a relapse of 78 per cent compared to 0-12 per cent for those who
remain on medication. Dr E Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical
Research Foundation in the US points out that structural brain
changes are also caused by drugs used to treat Parkinsons disease,
epilepsy, and other brain diseases.
A study released in 2013 also showed extensive tissue loss for those
rst diagnosed with schizophrenia before any medication treatment.
And, a study published in the Lancet in 2012 conrms that mainte-
nance treatment with antipsychotic drugs benets patients with schiz-
ophrenia, exactly what one would expect from clinical observation.
Erin Hawkes, a neuroscientist with schizophrenia who wrote the
book, When Quietness Came, said this in the Tyee (July 16, 2012):
Without medication, I fall into psychosis. My question, then, is this:
are my medications changing my brain for the better or for the
worse? What I care about is the quality of my life, my sanity, my self.
If that takes a bit of brain renovation, so be it. I seem to function bet-
ter with a (supposed, if I am a typical medicated schizophrenic)
smaller brain and enlarged ventricles. Is such medication wrong? We
cannot decide that these neural changes are more important than
our lives at the behavioral, emotional and cognitive levels. What
matters most to me is being well, without hallucinations, delusions
and paranoia.
Ms Ferrie references Dr Abram Hoffer, a very controversial gure
in schizophrenia research, and suggests that his work in
Saskatchewan in the 1950s emptied out that provinces asylums. The
truth is that antipsychotics were introduced at that time and enabled
people to be discharged everywhere. Hoffer did conduct the rst ever
clinical trial of a treatment in psychiatry when psychoanalysis was
the dominant theory and it was his belief (now commonly under-
stood) that schizophrenia is a brain disease and not the result of poor
parenting. That is what got him into trouble.
His clinical trial involved only 11 patients, was positive for the use
of vitamin B3, but his results have never been replicated. An Israeli
study designed to test this hypothesis was begun in 2005 and com-
pleted in 2008. There were 55 patients enrolled and as of January 10,
2013 no ndings have been presented so I can only assume the nd-
ings were negative.
And Hoffer was never opposed to the proper use of medications. In
a letter to the Medical Post (Vol. 37, No. 21, June 5, 2001, he wrote we:
do not recommend the use of medication be stopped ........ The pro-
gram combines the best of modern psychiatry, including the use of all
the drugs essential for the treatment of these patients, but it also
includes the use of the optimum nutrients given in optimum doses .
He then added, it is our aim to have all of our patients eventually
drug free or to need such a small dose of medication that they are no
longer suffering from the side-effects of these medications. This is
everyones aim, but unfortunately the science isnt quite there yet.
These are the kind of trade-offs that sometimes have to be made
in the management of any serious illness. I appreciate the opportuni-
ty to set some of the record straight.
Reply to CCPA Monitor re M. Ross critique Feb 5,2013
Mr. Ross criticized my recent article on psychiatry. Psychiatric illness
is a human disaster zone which morally precludes defending any
drug, method, or theory. Only documented patient outcome matters.
Short-term symptom control is well documented for psychotropics,
but not long-term. Temporary management with drugs requires
patients to optimally metabolize them. Enzyme system P450 protects
from liver failure (the most frequent reason for a drugs market with-
drawal). Genetic variability causes people who lack key enzymes to
suffer serious harm.
1
In the long termdetoxication breaks down even
in those who have optimal enzyme activity, because all synthetic
drugs are inherently toxic and overwhelm response capability.
2
Research currently focuses on pharmacogenomics to predict bio-
individual drug response. Simply accepting that all drugs have side
effects ignores biological variability with its life-or-death implica-
tions. Vitamin C is not comparable because drugs can kill. Vitamin C
is an essential nutrient
3
enabling enzymatic function throughout life;
lowered plasma levels impair detoxication.
4
Loose stool indicates
bio-individual bowel tolerance and requires dose adjustment.
5
Tolerance levels are highly individual for drugs and vitamins.
6
True, Parkinsons and epilepsy drugs also cause brain changes like
psychiatric drugs,
7
and this is unacceptable in them all . It is unethi-
cal that human suffering becomes a risk statistic. Any drug capable
of harmful side effects should be avoided in favor of available non-
toxic methods.
More than 50 genetically-anchored conditions, most with psychi-
atric implications, require enzyme-stimulating nutrients rather than
drugs. Toxin-specic nutrients can prevent side effects of psychotrop-
ics, such as tardive dyskinesia
8
. Optimal provision of requisite nutri-
ents for enzyme function should be routine.
9
Currently, patients
assume all the risks and our corporatized medical system reaps all the
benets. Hence, prescription drugs are the leading cause of death,
greatly surpassing street drugs.
10
Dr. Hoffer supported some psychotropics: rst-generation off-patent
ones, used in minimal doses, short-term, with optimal nutrient pro-
tection, as described in his memoirs. The current niacin-schizophre-
nia study is not abandoned but completed by Vladimir Lerner, of
Israels Ben Gurion University (past co-editor of the Nature Groups
Journal of Molecular Psychiatry) to be published soon.
11
Lerner research
focuses on clinical applications of essential nutrients in psychiatry.
The projects director, R.H. Belmaker in 1987 became the rst to hold
the Hoffer-Vickar Chair for Psychiatry at Ben Gurion University,
established in honor of Dr. Abram Hoffer.
If a double-blind placebo-controlled study exists prior to Hoffers
on nutrient treatment of schizophrenia
12
, let me know for inclusion
in a new edition of Dr. Hoffers scientic memoirs.
13
Research does not show that antidepressants are statistically bet-
ter than placebo when all published and unpublished studies are
considered, especially long-term research; for a potentially chronic
disease this matters most.
14
Mr. Ross refers to Andreason, Zipursky, Leucht, and Gibbons as
providing proof for efcacy and safety of psychotropics, prevention of
suicide, brain damage in schizophrenics before medication and becom-
ing worse or relapse without. The facts are:
Dr. Nancy Andreasens concern was in context of the dangers of
abruptly stopping medication when her fMRI research in humans,
showing that psychiatric meds cause shrinkage of crucial grey brain
matter (also in animals) was conrmed through autopsies of schizo-
phrenics and became public.
15
Dr. R. Zipurskys article is not drug-supportive but states that fMRI-
observed brain changes are explicable by the effects of antipsychot-
ic medication and that the evidence is compelling that psy-
chotropics cause brain damage apparent after 12 weeks of [drug]
treatment, but absent before medication, all put beyond doubt by
animal studies. He urges greater access to skilled mental health
services and social supports needed to achieve recovery.
16
Leuchts study shows that relapses during the rst 7 to 12 months
after diagnosis are less frequent in medicated patients. He urges fur-
ther study of the serious side effects, apparent already in the short
term.
17
Gibbons 2007 and 2012 studies were judged fraudulent by
Harvards School of Public Health for pretending that more suicides
took place after the FDAs 2004 Black Box warnings when prescrip-
tions decreased. The Centre for Disease Control and European data
show the exact opposite.
18
Surprisingly, Mr. Ross cited Seikkula as proof of the necessity for
psychiatric drugs
19
. Seikkulas now 20-year project in Finland, a com-
munity-based psychotherapeutic approach, is possibly the most suc-
cessful ongoing experiment in rehabilitation of schizophrenics with-
out drugs. At ve-year follow-up 85% were fully employed, 80% had
no psychotic episodes, and
2
3 never medicated or only initially. The
90% reduction in hospital admissions earned Sikkula a government
award. He trains therapists in many countries ( 25 work in Canada).
20
Mr. Ross is frustrated with Health Canada for tolerating the
Truehope Project. Harvard and Calgary universities jointly conduct
this study with 3,000 bi-polar patients, under psychiatric supervision,
using a nutrient protocol. In 2004 Health Canada tried to shut it
down but in July Justice G. M. Meager found in favor of Truehope and
dismissed Health Canadas actions as abusive and harmful on
the basis of two prior Supreme Court decisions.
21
Disclosure: My experience with psychotropics comes from two
adopted children. One lived through her parents cancer deaths and
was prescribed Prozac in the 1980s when side effects were still propri-
etary secrets
22
. She quickly became obese and suicidal: we were on
call 24 hours for a year. She decided on her own to stop Prozac.
Suicidal thoughts disappeared within weeks and she quickly lost
excess weight. She has led a successful life ever since. Another daugh-
ter suffered severe abuse in several foster homes, subsequently closed.
Her chronic nightmares stopped only returning when living on her
own; she was put on several psychiatric drugs simultaneously.
Extreme side effects (now listed in the manufacturers information)
appeared rapidly: partial limb paralysis, complete paralysis of the
esophagus, diabetes, deafness, partial blindness, and cardiac disease.
Her most recent doctors agreed that the drugs were the cause. She was
dependent on a respirator and tube-feeding for years. Bedsores pro-
moted infection from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. True, she no longer
reported nightmares. She died in May 2012.
ENDNOTES
1 On the bodys detoxication system, specically Cytochrome P450.
Indiana Universitys Division of Clinical Pharmacology has
a website, www.medicine.iupui.ed/clinpharm/ddis/table.aspx on
which all currently available drugs are listed which interact with
cytochrome P450. By clicking on each drug name, the details of
its interaction (=dangers) can be ascertained rapidly.
Aruas, I. M. et al, The LiverBiology and Pathobiology, Raven
Press, 1994. Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, 18
th
edition
provides the most concise overview of drug toxicity, metabolism
etc. in its pharmacology section. Also see W. M. Lee in footnote
1. An excellent PowerPoint presentation on the function of P450
is available from the National Institutes of Health, Markay, S.P.
Laboratory of Neurology, NIMH, NIH, Nov. 16, 2006.
2 On the CYP2D6 is a sub-group of cytochrome P450.
Detoxication enzymes have a great deal of genetic variabil-
ity. See W.M. Lee and Harrisons above. A useful overview of the
problems with poor and fast metabolization in people with dif-
fering genetic variants is found in Meyer, U. A. & Zanger, U. M.,
Molecular mechanisms of genetic polymorphisms of drug metab-
olization. Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, 1997, vol.
37:269-296. See also the detailed review of the problem by
Ingelman-Sundberg, M. Genetic polymorphisms of cytochrome
P450 2D6 (CYP2D6): clinical consequences, evolutionary aspects
and functional diversity. Pharmacogenomics Journal, vol. 5, p. 5-
13, 2005. Currently, the Canadian Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health in Toronto is initiating a trial specically to inves-
tigate cytochrome P450 variability.
3 On Vitamin C.
This is an essential nutrient, i.e. it is required for normal
body functioning but can only be obtained from the diet. These
include fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and some
phytonutrients. Because of their essential status they cannot be
patented.
4 On Vitamin C requirements.
The body requires more essential nutrients when under stress
due to due to sickness, pregnancy, lactation, physical/emotional
stress, or exogenous toxins (e.g. legal or illegal drugs, environ-
mental toxins, food allergies, radiation) which require provision
of more protective vitamins and especially vitamin-catalyzing
minerals. Sources footnote 6.
5 Loose stools:
For information on vitamins in general, ongoing research
into them and their clinical applications the best source to date
is the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University in
Corvalis, OR. Another Canadian source is Prousky, J. Integrative
Clinical Nutrition, 2012. Also useful: Balch, P.A., Prescription for
Nutritional Healing, fth edition, Avery, 2010. For specic clini-
cal application, see the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.
6 Tolerance levels of drugs and vitamins
See footnote 5.
7 For details on drug harm, mechanisms etc.
A good introduction to harm from psychotropic drugs is
Moncrieff, 2009, see footnote 1. Stine, K. E. & Brown, T. M.,
Principles of Toxicology, Second Edition, Francis & Taylor, 2006.
Silverman, R. B. The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug
Action, Elsevier, 2004. While much of the literature is in CYP450
issues and liver damage, drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier
and directly harm the brain are especially important to under-
stand. See footnote 16. On what nutrients are required for a
healthy brain and to counteract drugs with brain toxicity a good
introduction is Gomez-Pinilla, F. Brain Foods: the effects of nutri-
ents on brain function. Nature Review Neuroscience, vol. 9 (7):568-
578, 2008. See also Boskovic, M. et al. Oxidative stress in schizo-
phrenia, Current Neuropharmacology, June, 2011, vol. 9(2):301- 312
8 On nutrition and disease.
Possibly the best known expert on nutrition and disease is
University of California at Berekleys Bruce Ames. The 87-page
study on the 50 + disease states known to be genetically based
enzyme-deciency conditions is in the American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, vol. 75, No. 4, April 2002: High-dose vitamin therapy
stimulates variant enzymes with decreased coenzyme binding
afnity (increased Km): relevance to genetic disease and poly-
morphisms. Ames discusses the nutritional prevention and treat-
ment of tardive dyskenesia in this article as well.
See also Susan Cahalan, Brain on FireMy Month of Madness,
Free Press, 2012: a journalist describes how she suddenly fell into
orid insanity with all the classic symptoms of schizophrenia
and also bi-polar disorder accompanied by high blood pressure
and seizures. The diagnosis was made correctly by doctors who
thought outside the box of standard psychiatry: she suffered
from an enzyme-based illness called NMDA receptor autoim-
mune encephalitis for which, naturally, the rst round of
antipsychotic drugs did not work but made matters worse.
Appropriate treatment cured her.
An incomplete list of documented causes of schizophrenic and
bi-polar symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as just schizo-
phrenia includes:
Dementia paralytica, Pellagra, Porphyria, Hypothyroidism,
drug intoxications, Homocysteinuria, Folic acid/B12 deciency,
sleep deprivation, Heavymetaltoxicity, Hypoglycemia, psychomo-
tor epilepsy, cerebral allergy, wheat-gluten sensitivity, Histapenia
(copper excess), Histadelia, Pyroluria, Wilsons disease, xhronic
Candida infection, Huntingtons chorea, prostaglandins, Serine
excess, Prolactin excess, dialysis therapy, Leucine, histidine
imbalance, Interferon, amantadine, anti-viral drugs, platelets
decient in MAO (monoamine oxidase)
9 On pharmacogenomics.
The American Association for Clinical Chemistry has an
excellent website. Its discussion of how to test for a patients indi-
vidual P450 function and the tests that have developed from
pharmacogneomics is most helpful. This can also be accessed
through www.labtestonline.org.
10 On deaths from street drugs compared to pharmaceutical drug-
induced deaths.
The original source for statistics on deaths from properly pre-
scribed drugs causing death was done by the University of
Toronto in cooperation with the US FDA whose data base was
used for this study: Lazarou, J & Pomeranz, P. N. Incidence of
Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients: A Meta-analysis
of Prospective Studies, JAMA vol. 279 (15), 1998.
The most recent follow-up information I know of is by
Moore, T.J. at al. Serious Adverse Drug Events Reported for the
Food and Drug Administration: 1998-2005, Archives of Internal
Medicine, vol. 167 (16), 2007. See also Light, D.L. The Risks of
Prescription Drugs, Columbia University Press, 2010
For hospital related information a current book is recom-
mended: Makary, M. MD, Unaccountable: What Hospitals Wont
Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care,
Bloomsbury Press 2012.
For annual details go to the US governments Morbity and
Mortality sources which show for the most recent information
available that about 106,000 Americans died in 2011 from prop-
erly prescribed drugs. Illegal (street) drugs killed between 10,000
and 20,000 people.
11 On the most current study on schizophrenia and niacin treatment.
ClinicalTRials.gov provides the details on pending studies.
This Israel-based one completed its data collection in November
2009. For the research of its principal investigator:
http://www.researchgate.net/prole/Vladimir_Lerner/publications.
A discussion of B vitamins and synergistically acting nutri-
ents with references up to 1999: Werbach, M. Nutritional
Inuences on Mental Illness, Third Line Press, 1999. For references
since 1999 and an analysis of nutritional treatment of schizo-
phrenia and other psychiatric conditions since the work of Hoffer
and a complete up to date source list of all studies, including
double-blind placebo- controlled ones, see Prousky, J., Integrative
Clinical Nutriton, CCNM Press, 2012
12 Dr. Abram Hoffers double-blind placebo-controlled studies on
the niacin treatment for schizophrenia are listed in the citations
given in footnote 12 and in his autobiography, see footnote 13.
See also McGill Universitys John Hoffer MD, Micronutrients and
Mental DisordersReview Article, Journal of Orthomolecular
Medicine, vol. 27 (4), 2012. For conrmation on the specic
response to niacin in schizophrenia, a key component in Hoffers
approach in the 1950s, see Bosveld-van Haandel, L. et al. Niacin
skin ushing in schizophrenic and depressed patients and
healthy controls. Psychiatric Research, Aug. 30, 2006
13 Hoffer, A. Adventures in PsychiatryThe Scientic Memoirs, Kos,
2005. Currently available through Canadian Schizophrenia
Foundation. Tel 416-733-2117. As Dr. Hoffer expanded his treat-
ment protocols in tandem with clinical observation, essential
fatty acids became key components of his evolving protocols. For
a recent overview of the essential fatty acid research specic to
psychiatry see Peet, M. et al, Phospholipid Spectrum Disorder in
Psychiatry, Marius Press, UK, 1999. The earliest recorded nutri-
tional treatment of schizophrenia was published in 1844 in The
American Journal of Insanity, vol. 1 (1) and was written by psy-
chiatrists working in lunatic asylums in New York state. They
reported a roughly 50% complete recovery rate with their
approach. For the full story see Hoffer autobiography.
14 On SSRIs being no better than placebo:
Kirsch, I. The Emperors New Drugs, Basic Books, 2010. These
ndings are based on the most exhaustive analysis of all pub-
lished and unpublished data on antidepressants covering more
than 2 decades. What these ndings should cause to happen is
not the defense of the drugs regardless of the evidence, but an
engagement with this evidence and more serious research into
the placebo effect.
15 On psychotropic drugs harming the brain.
Dorph-Petersen, K-A., et al. The inuence of chronic expo-
sure to antipsychotic medications on brain size before and after
tissue xation: a comparison of Haloperidol and Olanzapine in
Macaque monkeys. Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 30:1649-1661,
2005. Konopaske, G. T. et al. Effect of Exposure to antipsychotic
medication on cell numbers in the parietal cortex of Macaque
monkeys. Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 32:1216-1223, 2007.
Beng-Choon Ho et al. Association between brain-derived
enurotrophic factor Val166Met gene plymorphism and progres-
sive brain volume changes in schizophrenia, American Journal of
Psychiatry, vol. 167 (12):1890-1899, 2007. Same authors: Long-
term antipsychotic treatment and brain volumes, Archives of
General Psychiatry vol. 68 (2) February 2011.
16 On the misrepresented research of R. B. Zipurksy of Macmaster
University.
Zipursky, R. B. et al. The myth of schizophrenia as a progres-
sive brain disease. Schizophrenia Bulletin, Dec. 7, 2012.
See also: Harding, C.M. & Zahniser, J. H. Empirical correction
of seven myths about schizophrenia with implications for treat-
ment. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia vol. 90, supplement 384, 1994
Natures special issue of November 11, 2010 included recom-
mendations for necessary research focus. See Wykes, T. Cognitive
remediation therapy needs funding, p. 165-166. The Nov 11,
2010 issue of Nature was devoted to schizophrenia. The most
urgent recommendation was to fund cognitive remediation,
because it works so well and is relatively cheap, while medica-
tions are blunt instruments whose side effects even worsen
cognitive problems. More than 100 trials documenting such
non-drug based approaches are cited.
17 The study Mr. Ross refers to about showing that drug treatment is
essential:
Leucht, S. et al. Antipsychotic drugs versus placebo for relapse
prevention in schizophrenia: a systematic review and meta-
analysis. Lancet , June 2, 2012. In the March 2008 issue of
Schizophrenia Bulletin S. Leucht and J.M. Kanel disussed the prob-
lems with this type of research in a long article making it clear
that no one trial, regardless of size, can answer the complex
questions involved in schizophrenia treatment. They especially
emphasize that all studies tend to be industry-sponsored, that
optimal drug provision for a rst episode is unknown and proba-
bly impossible to know, they identify social and nancial pres-
sures, and conclude that using many psychiatric drugs is not
supported by the evidence and that using many drugs (polyphar-
macy) is far in excess of the supporting data. They also state
that relapse rates tend to be high once placed on drugs anyway.
They especially are concerned about the fact that there has
never been a clinical trial to address what to do when a relapse
occurs.
See Ciudada, A. et al. Relapse and therapeutic interventions
in a 1-year observational cohort study of non-adherent outpa-
tients with schizophrenia. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology
and Biological Psychiatry, vol 30 (2):245-250, March 30, 2012. This
study was released almost at the same time as that by Leucht in
2012. This Spanish research indicated that non-compliant
patients who just wouldnt take their drugs did a lot better after
one year than those who continued taking them.
18 Mr. Ross refers to the 2012 study by Robert D. Gibbons as proving
that antidepressants prevent suicide.
Gibbons is not a physician and has never had to face the
results of his opinions. He is an expert in statistics and was on
the FDA panel that voted to have Black Box Warnings on
increased risk of suicide with Prozac and other SSRIs. He voted
against such warnings, despite the evidence. He also works for
the pharmaceutical industry as an expert witness in court cases
when suicides took place. He produce 10 studies to show that
the FDA should reverse its warnings. One from 2007 and again
the 2012 persist in not mentioning the suicide data in relation to
SSRI prescription rates that are available and in the public
domain. The most succinct critique comes from Dr. M. Miller of
the Harvard School of Public Health submitted to the American
Journal of Psychiatry, where those Gibbons articles are published.
The website MadInAmerica.com and davidhealy.org provide
direct access to the international critiques of these fraudulent
studies. None of those critiques were published in that journal, as
is the custom with any science publication, and even formal let-
ters to its editor-in-chief demanding to do so simply went unan-
swered. The most benign guess for this unbelievable non-
response is that the off-prints of this article would be in the tens
of thousands requested, paid for, and distributed by the compa-
nies that make antidepressants to prescribing doctors. The
income would be tremendous for the journal. How exactly this
practice works in these journals, all of which are for-prot publi-
cations, see Richard Smith, The Trouble with Medical Journals,
Royal Society of Medicine Press, 2006, and D. Healy,
Pharmageddon, 2012.
19 On the research by J. Sekkula which Mr. Ross linked me to for
purpose of alleged proof of the need for medication:
The research by and on Sekkulas Open Dialogue treatment
of schizophrenia and the international representatives of treat-
ment approach can be accessed on www.taosinstitute.net
Just released has been the nal article on the 20-year long-
term studies by M. Harrow of the University of Illinois School of
Medicine. The results show that about 40% of patients recovered
without drugs (much like those recorded in 1844!) and those who
went off drugs did not relapse more frequently than those who
chose to stay on them. The details are worth studying. Harrow,
M. et al. Psychological Medicine,October 2012. Put putting Martin
Harrow into the PubMed search engine, all his studies over that
2-year period can be accessed at once and reveal the progression
of data.
Other long-term studies of a nutritional and emotionally
supportive approach are discussed and referenced in Whitaker, R.
Anatomy of an Epidemic, Broadway, 2010.
20 See www.taosinstitute.net and go to Canada.
Truehope Project: For a fuller treatment of this case I refer
the reader to chapter 2 entitled Health Canadas Abuse of
Power in my book What Part of No! Dont They Understand? Kos,
2005. Pages 197263 deal with Truehope specically. The entire
legal decision is reproduced there. This book is now available
online for free at www.kospublishing.com and
www.helkeferrie.com
21 On Prozacs history:
The best source is David Healys international bestseller Let
Them Eat Prozac, Lorimer 2004. The increased risk of suicide was
known already as soon as the drug came to market because the
manufacturers had removed references to those trial members
who committed suicide and added ctitious suicide attempts to
the placebo arm. The rst FDA discussion about putting Black
Box Warnings took place in the early 1990s.
For extensive sources on the issue of fraud and harm in psy-
chotropic and other drugs go to my website www.helkeferrie.com
and my two books What Part of No! Dont They Understand and
Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health. (Both avail-
able for free downloading). Forthcoming April 2012 is Creative
Outrage. Tel 519-927-1049. E-mail: helkeferrie@gmail.com
SECTI ON 6
HAVE THE COURAGE TO
USE YOUR OWN REASON!*
People ask me frequently how I can manage to work in the area of
medical politics and not get depressed and overwhelmed. To address
that very reasonable question I wrote two articles, given below. They
were originally published in Vitality magazine under the titles Time
for Celebration and Coping with Reality respectively.
2009
You are invited to a great annual bash this month, namely Torontos
Whole Life EXPO (November 2729, 2009), where for the 23rd year we
can celebrate health, critical thinking, and the inexhaustibility of
good ideas. I intend to be there with a great, big organic, home-made
carrot cake at the Kos Publishing booth to celebrate the fact that I
have been writing for Vitality for 10 years! If you got shocking,
empowering, and thought-provoking information from my articles, I
am very happybut just think what a dizzying learning curve it has
been for me! Writing for an information-hungry audience imbued
with doubt, and ready to question any claim to authority, has been a
journey towards enlightenment and an exercise in humility. It has
also been a breathtaking trip through medical politics as it unfold-
edwith editor Julia Woodford hot on my heels wanting it all in print
for you
*
Voltaire (16941778)
1999 was an important year in the politics of medicine. The events
set in motion then have caused fundamental changes in the way peo-
ple perceived food, drugs, doctors, and government, and I reported on
many of these changes. I had no clue then about the scams underpin-
ning Big Medicine and that it was focused on symptom control and
prot from disease and death, nor did I know then about Big
Agriculture being hell-bent on protsnever mind the health of soil,
water, and essential bacteria. I knew nothing about the abysmal
ignorance of our doctors who are super-educated in mostly what
doesnt much matter to human health. I knew hardly anything about
the mainstream research into nutrition and its primary roles of pre-
venting and curing illness. As for environmental toxins, I had to get
sick myself rst to understand that DDT wasnt the only poison, and
I had encountered it while growing up in India in copies amounts
from age three to 18. I groan when I remember having allowed in the
early 1980s my own kids to have their uoride treatments in school,
never having worried about mercury amalgam llings (euphemisti-
cally known as silver llings), and trustingly followed medical
advice I would now classify as bordering on the criminal: I was on
Premarin hormone replacement therapy for 17 years, following an
unnecessary hysterectomy during which the surgeon removed my
ovaries for good measure! Thanks to my discovery of mega-vitamin
therapy, after reading Linus Pauling, I did not become a HRT death
statistic, and thanks to environmental medicine physician Dr. Jozef
Krop, I found out about non-toxic bio-identical hormones. Thats how
I also learned that doctors, who cure patients and protect them from
harm, tend to wind up in disciplinary investigations and even lose
their licenses.
When somebody once mentioned to me at Consumer Health of
Canada that the cure for almost all cancers was known since about
World War II, I smiled and said, Oh, really as one does with a
nutcase from whose company one wants to escape quickly. That same
guy handed me a copy of Dr. Max Gersons 1958 book, A Cancer
TherapyResults of Fifty Cases. I read it, and everything I had once
believed evaporated. I had no idea that nutritional medicine worked.
SECTION 6: Have the Courage to Use Your Own Reason! 321
Journalism works with the 5 Ws and the 1 H: Who? Where?
When? What? Why? and How ? Investigative journalism adds a cru-
cial 7th question: Is it true? Working for Vitality started in the summer
of 1999 with a call from editor Julia Woodford who asked me if it was
really true what she had read in an Alive Magazine issue about the
Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons. She, who had by then
worked for over a decade for the promotion of natural medicine,
knew a thing or two about scams. Nevertheless, she was oored by
my Alive story about how the College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Ontario (CPSO) had, a decade earlier, deceived its own physician
membership by sidestepping all discussion about scientic evidence
for chelation therapy and then asserting to the Ontario government,
that there was no scientic or clinical justication for it; this resulted
in chelation therapy, without the CPSO physician memberships
knowledge, being outlawed in Ontario. Using it, instead of drugs for
heart disease cases and to prevent the loss of limbs from diabetic neu-
ropathy, cost some doctors their licenses.
In 1999, the new Regulated Health Professions Act had just come
into force and suddenly chelation was no longer illegal; the Ray gov-
ernment had cut that odd sub-section, by chance or deliberatelyI
dont know. Julia wanted the documentation on which my Alive arti-
cle had been based. I liked that request very much indeed because it
signaled she was into serious journalism! I provided it to her, and she
asked me to write for Vitality about chelation and the CPSOs determi-
nation to silence doctors many of whom by then had begun to take
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity seriously and attracted the inquisitori-
al attention of the CPSO as a result of their new interest. Pesticides
were still good for us, and doctors stating otherwise were in deep trou-
ble. It is only ten years ago that doctors were routinely expected to
refer people complaining about feeling sick from pesticide or perfume
exposure to psychiatrists. Today, even the CPSO ofces have a no-
scent policy prominently displayed in their washrooms! Quebec,
Ontario, and a few other provinces now have bans on the use of cos-
metic pesticides. But dinosaurs are a hardy bunch whose predatory-
focused brains resist anything new: now the CPSO is after doctors
diagnosing and treating chronic Lyme disease which, in contrast to
the rest of the world, is for them not a proper diagnosis. (See the
book I edited on this subject, Ending DenialThe Lyme Disease Epidemic
Canadas Public Health Disaster, 2010 order from Kos Publishing Inc.
519-927-1049).
In June of 1999, the CPSO, after an investigative process and trial
that had begun in 1988, found environmental medicine physician
Dr. Jozef Krop guilty of diagnosing and treating environmental ill-
ness. Ironically, that was the same day on which the international
medical journals published the diagnostic criteria for MCS, developed
jointly by Canadian university professors and doctors with medical
researchers at Johns Hopkins medical school and MIT in the US. This
needed to be shouted from the rooftops and Dr. Krops defense team
required nancial support, both of which Vitality supported consistently.
I was one of Dr. Krops patients, having been poisoned by pesti-
cides, specically Roundup from our neighboring golf course, DDT
while growing up in India, and from a life-time of mercury amalgam
tooth llings. I became sick with a severe neurological disorder called
Myasthenia gravissupposedly idiopathic, i.e. cause unknown. I
was unable to drive, vacuum my house, read, or answer the phone.
When my physician husband and I gured out, with the unexpected
help of the then chief toxicologist for the World Health Organization,
Dr. Boyd Haley, that one frequent cause of MG was heavy metal poi-
soning, we presented the scientic literature to our dentists and asked
for my 17 mercury llings to be removed according to the protocol of
the International Academy of Oral and Medical Toxicology (IAOMT)
which Dr. Haley had co-founded. My dentist said that she could not
do so, because the College of Dentistry would go after her, and she
would probably lose her license. The joint efforts of a dentist trained
by IAOMT and who openly deed his college, Dr. William Pressy, and
Dr. Krop who ignored the CPSO, I recoveredand have since then cul-
tivated a cool, determined, and creative rage. Today, more than 52%
of all North American dentists practice mercury-free.
In 1999, Ontarios Health Freedom Bill, called the Kwinter Bill
after its originator, Liberal MPP Monte Kwinter, was unanimously
passed by the Harris government. MPP Kwinter conceived the idea for
this amendment to the Medicine Act when he met Dr. Jerry Green
who had lost his license, following a classic CPSO kangaroo court
investigation, for supplementing standard toxic cancer therapy with
helpful non-toxic nutrition. Today, the cancer societies around the
world not only agree that cancer is caused by environmental carcino-
gens like pesticides, but urge cancer patients to supplement with high
doses of nutrients, especially vitamin D
3
. Indeed, on November 3, the
University of Toronto hosted a conference on how vitamin D
3
prevents
cancer. Attending physicians get continuing education credits. Ten
years ago, most of us did not even know what D
3
actually is and does,
and the idea that a vitamin prevents cancer was then heresy.
The Kwinter Bill became law in 2000, amending Ontarios Medicine
Act. Many provinces have since then made the same legislative
change which, essentially, decriminalizes progress and change in
medicine and protects the doctor-patient relationship from third
party interference (i.e. from the interests of political and nancial bot-
tom lines). In each province, the Establishment powers fought to the
last to prevent it.
That same year, Dr. Shiv Chopra, then still with Health Canada,
and his colleagues Drs. Gerard Lambert and Margaret Haydon,
caused the federal Senate to hold hearings into the appalling practice
of our federal government to force carcinogens into our food supply
in clear contravention of the absolute safety requirement of the Food
and Drugs Act. These hearings caused bovine growth hormone and
many other drugs to be stopped across the world.
Also in 1999, in Europe, that infamous semi-secret multi-national
brotherhood of government bureaucrats and corporate honchos,
which we know as Codex, was startled when the public nally got it
and mounted a series of successful legal challenges over the next 10
years to that stealthy corporate take-over of food, drugs, water, genes,
medicines, and farming. I kept you informed on those unfolding sto-
ries; the war is not over, but it will be and in the end the truth wins
out, but it is always painful. Unlike wars with guns and bombs, wars
for truth and liberty leave behind deeper understanding and trans-
formed minds even among those who once were enemies.
In 1998, I met Dr Abram Hoffer for the rst time, and in 2005 was
privileged to publish his scientic memoirs. He died in his nineties on
May 27, 2009. All my articles, one way or another, over the past
decade, reported on what he and Linus Pauling called orthomolecu-
lar medicine, meaning the right molecule (nutrient, not synthetic
toxin) which sets healing in motion. The conceptual basis applies to
everything from farming, to disease, to mental health.
Orthomolecular thinking is reality-based, not prot-based. That is the
challenge of and for our time.
For me the most important development in the past ten years,
regarding food and drugs, was the Human Genome Project. Big
Business was certain that cracking the DNA code would lead to
enormous wealth and control. Well, undoubtedly lots of people are
trying, and in part succeeding, to making money out of this project.
However, the big surprise was that most of the regulatory genes
(which control entire biological systems) are exquisitely vulnerable to
environmental toxins, and so those toxins will have to go if we want
to keep those genes working. Not much prot there. Furthermore, the
nice, neat t hoped for between genes and specic diseases did not
materialize either. Testing people for their allegedly genetically-
anchored disease is a pipe dream, too. Every disease, with or without
a genetic anchor, needs a trigger to start it, and those triggers are: (1)
environmental toxins and (2) lack of the right molecules decreed by
nature as essential, namely nutrients. Indeed, the genetic code now
cracked us. In June 2008, the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences reported that taking vitamins and minerals can actually x
genetic defects. Well, the ghosts of Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer
must be having a great belly laugh!
Looking back on the letters I received over the years from Vitality
readers, I notice that they used to be requests for information on
good doctors or dentists. While those are still in high demand and
still often embattled, now the letters are far more often about specic
nutrients, how they work, which alternative cancer therapy clinic I
recommendnot: whether alternative is a good idea; thats taken
for granted in such inquiries. Collective attitudes have undoubtedly
changed. Blind faith in medical authority is diminishing rapidly.
Back in 1998, when a University of Toronto and FDA research project
investigated how many people were using alternative medicine, the
answer was about 50%. Today, about 92% of Canadians nd espe-
cially herbal medicine helpful and two thirds use it and other forms
of alternative (to synthetic drugs) therapies. Indeed, within just a
decade, Canadians understood the fraud involved with genetically
engineered foods, and polls consistently show that close to 98% of us
dont want the stuff, and for all the right reasons, namely immune
dysfunction and cancer.
It is, therefore, interesting that the governments main worry
about the H1N1 vaccine (unnecessary, untested, and dangerous) is
that most people might not want it. Politically, that new skepticism in
the public mind is reected in the recent letter many of us received
from the federal Minister of Health assuring Canadians that there are
absolutely no plans for implementing a program of compulsory vacci-
nations. The public has become rather like a mouthy teenagerimpos-
sible to control, but sometimes can be persuaded to comply. In this case,
however, the teenage f-off approach might be the wiser choice.
Another astounding development over the past decade has been
the phenomenal increase in medical fraudand its relentless public
exposure and equally determined pursuit by the courts. Big Pharma
cannot make drugs that heal and must resort to pretense, fraud, and
glitzy propaganda. Dictatorships and tyrannical systems are always
the most vulnerable in their propaganda departments. Public opin-
ion shifts when the lies become obviousand the material for joke!
The giant pharmaceutical companies have been crippled by multi-
billion dollar liability rulings that have run out of appeals. True, they
are explicitly protected from liability with regard to the H1N1 vac-
cinebut our government remains liable and answerable to the
courts, should this become a public health disaster. Indeed, the courts
even rule frequently against patents for genetic engineering, making
the whole GMO food enterprise increasingly vulnerable to collapse.
World-class researchers, who were once duped into cooperating with
Big Pharma scams, spill the beans, blow the whistle, come out of their
laboratory closets, and raise hell. Corruption is as old as human insti-
tutions. I am sure Neanderthals cheated each other over choice mam-
moth steaks. Nothing new there. What is new today is the hunger for
truthno, for not scandal, but for the truth, facts, veriable information.
In this context I nd one of the most helpful developments the rise
of the documentary lm. Documentaries have become truly educa-
tional. I am thinking of the 2001 lm from the National Film Boards,
The Genetic Takeover, which made a splash around the world. One
of the greatest ones surely is the 2004 lm, The Corporation. Most
of the scientists featured in it I got to interview and reported on their
work in Vitality. Since then, we have had fantastic revelations through
Supersize Me, the various GMO and Monsanto lms, and now
Food Inc.
Ten years ago, the medical, dental, regulatory Establishment was
rmly in charge andlike most of us, myself includedoften were
innocently unaware of the fact that they were in the most horrendous
conicts of interest between their duty to their patients and the indus-
tries that got rich on product lines which we now, without any irony,
correctly call the Death Industry. When awakening strikes, everybody
ceases to slumber, one way or another.
Two hundred years ago we lived in a world in which human
beings were sold in open markets. Those who questioned such prac-
tices were harshly treated because slavery was perceived as indispen-
sable to a thriving economy. When slavery was outlawed in 1832 in
Britain, it still took the American Civil War to stop it in this hemi-
sphere, and I was in high school when African Americans nally got
the vote. Yet, the change that began in 1832 is inexorably continuing.
We are in the midst of such a fundamental change of perception with
regard to food and medicine. The Sickness Industry will cease to be
the basis of our economy. We have millions of years ahead of us
because we are getting smarter.
2011
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
VoltaireFrench Enlightenment philosopher 16941778
Many people have asked me how I manage to cope with the monu-
mental task of researching medical corruption, corporate and politi-
cal sleaze, and the associated statistics on death and injury, while still
retaining my sanity and optimism. The fact is that horrible things
keep happening, so denial wont work. What follows are my thoughts
on the matter, along with my guiding principles which so far have
been helpful. But rst, a little rollercoaster ride through some current
highs and lows is necessary to illustrate my approach.
We receive enormous amounts of bad and good news all the time.
If we only try to shut our eyes to the bad stuff while fervently hoping
for more good stuff, we could become very frustrated and stressed out.
So we often cant help but look for a trend, a clear pattern in the tea
leaves, a guiding message from the stars, a denitive and authorita-
tive interpretationsomething (anything!) that allows us to grab
reality by the tail and shout: Gotcha! Now I know what this is all
about. (I, too, read the astrology section in Vitality faithfully every
month and that can be sometimes very amusing.)
The relentless, repetitive nature of destruction and evil is especial-
ly exhausting. German philosopher Hanna Arendt used to refer to
this as the banality of evil. How very true. One feels this peculiar
mix of boredom and outrage. Consider this pile of bad news and
notice how strangely and imperceptibly sometimes the bad slides over
into the good newsreality seems to be elastic:
The U.S. spends $7,538 per person annually on health care, far
more than other industrialized countries, yet has the worst life
expectancy. Given the garbage that they seduce their population into
eating, the toxicity of their environment, and the state-sponsored
support of toxic drugs and useless often maiming procedures, this g-
ure does not surprise. Unfortunately, the beneciary of all those
health care dollars is the medical industry, not the patient.
Arising from the same policy that produces wealth from sickness
comes the statistic that more than 2,000 American babies died with-
in the last few years from vaccines alone. (When four died in Japan,
the vaccines were removed at once.) Between 2006 and 2010, the U.S.
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), operated by the
FDA and the CDC, received 59,000 such reports from pneumococcal
and inuenza B vaccines alone, of which 30,094 required hospitaliza-
tions from which 2,169 died; 95% of the deaths were in babies. In
Canada, we dont even have such a reporting system!
Simultaneously, we learn that the Danish researcher hired by the
CDC to prove that vaccines dont cause autism has just been indict-
ed on 13 counts of fraud and money laundering; his study on MMR
vaccines was also totally fraudulent, relying on databases that dont
exist, but his research continues to be cited as proof that these vac-
cines are safe.
After some Herculean efforts to purge medical research of conicts
of interest, McGill University researchers revealed in the Journal of the
American Medical Association in March 2011 that such conicts are
starting to sneak back in: the drugs being recommended are praised
by those who are paid to do so.
An analysis reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in
February showed that those journals allowing disguised advertising
to appear as research articles also rely on drug ads for prot; journals
that do not allow ads at all, being non-prot, publish research that
dismisses the identical drugs that were advocated in the journals rely-
ing on drug ads.
The same ndings were made for synthetic (carcinogenic!) HRT
drugs: doctors who received money from HRT manufacturers contin-
ue to recommend them despite the mountain of evidence proving the
harm that these drugs cause and despite the results of the Womens
Initiative Report. On the other hand, Bioidentical Hormone Replace-
ment Therapy (BHRT) is totally safe, a published and researched
factand like vitamins carries no bad side effects or the risk of death,
and yet is virtually ignored by mainstream practitioners. (Go to ama-
zon.com for an excellent list of books on natural hormone replacement;
highly recommended are those by Dr. Terry Hertoghe.)
Psychiatric drugs are possibly the worst of all, as they are usually
prescribed in situations where informed consent is meaningless.
Added to the long list of drugs causing likely harm, Seroquel and
Zyprexa are now linked to a high incidence of blood clots leading to
strokes. AstraZeneca paid out $198 million to settle successful claims
by 17,500 injured patients in 2011. Recently, Eli Lilly paid out a
whopping $1.42 billion to people harmed by Zyprexa, and Glaxo-
SmithKline paid more than $1 billion for injuries from Paxil. This led
to a very interesting decision: Big Pharma announced that they will
no longer invest in psychiatric drug development. Now if that isnt
good news, I dont know what is!
In February, President Obama announced that the government
will change patent law in various waysapparently drugs and war
have simply become too expensive. The estimated savings over the
next 10 years from such changes to drug patents would be $11 billion.
It was also noted that FDA warnings on specic classes of antipsy-
chotics, which injure the brain, promote cancer and diabetes, and
cause sudden death, resulted in a decline in prescriptions and compli-
ance. Publishing facts makes a difference. Similarly, the anti-depres-
sant drugs known as SSRIs (e.g. Prozac) are in trouble now that large
studies showed that 70% of users remain depressed, no matter how
many SSRIs they take. (See Toxic Psychiatry in this book.)
A nding published by the National Cancer Institute indicated
that fewer and fewer doctors refer their cancer patients to clinical tri-
als. Are they getting tired of reducing real people to guinea pigs for
toxic drug experiments?
Occasionally, facts get so big that they can no longer be avoided,
as is the case with the American Heart Association telling everybody
to reduce salt intakeat last. As we learn from the work of Dr. Max
Gerson in the 1940s and 50s, salt competes with potassium which is
key to any immune function and must be at optimal levels. Maybe
they will nally get around to rened sugar as well? However, when
hospitals stop serving margarinemade from toxic, hydrogenated
oilswith daily meals for patients recovering from heart attacks
thats when Ill really get excited.
Meantime, the European Union has declared war on smoking
after evaluating the very positive results of such policies in other
countries, such as Canada.
A whopper of good news appeared in April when Ireland, Japan,
and Egypt banned the cultivation and import of all GMO crops.
Monsanto is predictably furious, but when it sued Germany on the
same issue, the company lost.
After helping to nurse a very dear friend who died of asbestos-
caused mesothelioma (a usually fatal lung cancer), I burst into tears
and shouted with joy when I read that Quebecs largest labor union
cancelled its support for asbestos mining in March. Even the Harper
government had to stop nancing their phony Chrysotile Institute,
which was originally established to churn out propaganda claiming
that Canadian asbestos is different from all other forms of the deadly
stuff, and that ours is safe to inhale. During his recent election cam-
paign, Harper reafrmed his commitment to exporting Quebec asbestos
to other countries, stating that its good for the mining industry.
CBC reported on April 20 that the pesticide ban in Ontario, initi-
ated only a few years ago, has already yielded evidence of improved
water quality. Even better, Ontario will stick to its decision to ban 2,4-
D, despite the claims of safety issued by Health Canada.
And now for the most amazing piece of good news: after decades
of lling millions of mouths with mercury amalgam, a neurotoxic
poison, the U.S. government nally accepted scientic fact and
announced in April 2011 that its use is now being phased out.
Especially surprising was a development in the U.S. in January:
the so-called State Boards, which control doctors licenses like the
Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons do in Canada, have for decades
been accustomed to enjoying unchallenged authority on the enforce-
ment of whatever arbitrary standards of practice their friends in Big
Pharma desire. The same is true for the Colleges in Canada, which
routinely ignore published literature that they dont like when prose-
cuting a doctor for innovative work, usually without patient com-
plaint (Google Glasnost Report 2001 for details or read/download it
from my website www.helkeferrie.com). Well, several medical associ-
ations sued the Texas Board when it went after the world-famous
expert in environmental medicine, Dr. William J. Rea, and won! This
decision serves notice to the medical establishment throughout the
U.S. and Canada that business as usual is over. The shift has begun
towards patient outcome as being of primary importance and that
the outcome is not to be decided by the regulators, but by the
patient. The arbitrary enforcement of standards of practice, regardless
of patient outcome, will not be tolerated anymore. Texas has also
now introduced an excellent health freedom bill to clinch the matter.
This constant barrage of bad news and good news can make the
nerves raw. What attitude may we hope to develop that allows one to
remain anchored in a Still Point, rather than becoming exhausted
and discouraged by it all? Clearly, the silly advice that all will work
out in the end is of no use; there simply is too much that does not
work out. Turning ones back on the world is morally unacceptable to
me, and giving way to cynicism or despair is a waste of life and
brains. A quick overview of human nature, as science is beginning to
see it, might be helpful.
This year, the Allen Institute for Brain Science published the
worlds rst anatomically and genomically comprehensive brain
map in an effort to understand how human brains actually work.
The most striking nding is that about 94% of whatever goes on in
human brains goes on in all human brains everywherewe are far
more alike than we are different in our interactions with the world and
each other. To me, this is cause for celebration. It suggests, among
many interesting ideas, that empathy is actually real communication.
No wonder we have mounting evidence, then, that sad people are
far more destructive than happy ones; that children will spontaneous-
ly share prizes after working together; that positive medical outcomes
are determined far more by the empathy the doctor genuinely feels
for the patient than any treatment; that positive emotions and atti-
tudes reduce stress hormone production in ourselves and through
interaction with others, as do inammatory responses. Even in battle-
elds, soldiers with emotional resiliency survive the horrors of battle
better than those who give up on themselves and others. When it
comes to job performance, a new marker has been methodically eval-
uated: people who are more honest and humble (as opposed to the
driven, ambitious types trying to get as much as possible for them-
selves, not giving a damn about others) perform far better at their
work, and predictably so.
Most interesting is the nding that people who are satised with
their lives and engaged in their communities are most likely to vote
its the depressed ones who give up on themselves, their role in the
world, and indeed the world and dont care about government and
policies. Furthermore, longevity studies show that active, even at
times stressful, involvement in the world and life leads to longer and
healthier lives.
Consider now the amazing results obtained by the research of Tel
Aviv Universitys Eva Jablonka. She examined the assumption that
arose a decade ago when the Human Genome Project was completed.
They had closed the lid on all thats to be known about our genes.
But what they really did was open a Pandoras Box. Professor
Jablonka has now shown that, for example, the stress of cancer and
chronic diseases may be passed on to our offspring through deep
and complicated underlying cellular mechanisms that we are just
now beginning to understand. We can inuence our heredity by
our choices and the things to which we are exposed. She uncovered a
process called DNA methylation [which] alters gene function such
that various activities within our cells are inuenced by our lifestyles.
In other words: what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves;
what we do to others, we also do to ourselves; and whatever we do real-
ly, really matters, right down to our cells and hereditary mechanisms.
Somehow, people who experience themselves as a part of all life
just do what must be done and assume that there will be a response
from likeminded people. The little Ecuadorian indigenous villager,
Maria Aguinda, comes to mind. In February, she took on oil giant
Chevron and won, making them pay $9.5 billion in nes to restore
the environment in her village area, which was virtually destroyed by
corporate greed.
There are, in my view, three problems that need to be understood
in order to develop a peaceful and workable approach to the world.
First, recognize and escape the trap of conrmation bias which
compels us to look only for evidence that supports an unexamined
positive or negative view. It prevents the experience of novelty, and
therefore cuts off all creative interaction with reality. Worst of all, an
attitude of conrmation bias prevents any possibility of even noticing
something new and positive because all observation serves merely as
fuel for a predetermined and unexamined prejudgment. Dan
Gardners brilliantly entertaining and beautifully researched book,
Future Babble, explains this trap. The fact is that we do not know how
anything will turn outall we can do is roll with the punches and
remain open to surprise. In Buddhism we are taught that it does not
ultimately what happens to us, but what we do with it.
Second, recognize that the illusion about the past as having been
better is just thatan illusion. The past was terrible. Have a look at
the book Canada before Medicare, view the National Film Board docu-
mentary on Tommy Douglas, and browse through the books listed
below. You will be ever so glad to return to the present, a time in
which action is possible and communication is a powerful tool for
making life better.
Third, that scary voice prophesying certain doom must be
silenced. Apocalyptic thought is one of those just-so-stories that are by
denition not veriable or open to any sort of testing. The world will
indeed come to an end some dayour entire civilization will go down
in some form for sure. But not yet. Meanwhile, countless opportuni-
ties for random acts of kindness offer themselves. Pain is unavoid-
able, but goodness, kindness, and creativity are equally inevitable
and certain.
The worst of all traps is, to my mind, that ultimately infantile
desire for certainty, for a solution that lasts. That desire is worse than
pharmaceutical or hard drugs. It drains all creativity. Only doubt and
an open mind willing to recognize change can keep us safe from
despair.
I
Recommended Reading and Sources
Henry Waxman, The Waxman Report, Twelve Hachette Book Group 2010
Dan Gardner, Future BabbleWhy Expert Predictions FailAnd Why Believe
them Anyway, McLelland & Stewart, 2010
A. S. Wohl, Endangered LivesPublic Health in Victorian Britain, Harvard 1983
H. Heeney, editor. Life Before Medicarethe Canadian Experience, Stories
Project 1995
For the scandal about Dr. Poul Thorsen and his indictment in April 2011 on 13
counts of fraud and money laundering go to my book review of Dr. Andrew
Wakeelds book in Vitality, March 2011, in which his fraudulent methodology is
discussed in detail, showing how he invented the data to prove that MMR
vaccines cannot cause autism.
The numbers of vaccine-related deaths and injuries is found on
www.naturalnews.com in their March 24, 2011, issue in an article by Neil Z.
Miller who provides the primary sources for the stats. Go to the website
Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute for more information and www.medalerts.org
M. Roseman et al. Reporting conicts of interest in meta-analyses of trials and
pharmaceutical treatments. JAMA 305 (10), p. 1008 ff, March 11, 2011
The inuence of advertising on drug recommendations. CMAJ, February 28
2011; the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association is available for free on-
line.
A. Fugh-Berman et al. Promotional tone in reviews on menopausal hormone
therapy after the Womens Health Initiative: An analysis of published articles.
PLoS 8 (3), March 15, 2011. PLoS is available for free on-line. The long-term
analysis of synthetic HRT effects came from the Womens Health Initiative trial
and were a post-hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial, the Lancet 2009;
374:1243-51.
N. Carrie et al. A Population-based assessment of specialty physicians
involvement in cancer clinical trials. Journal of the National Cancer Institute,
February 11, 2011
H.C. Kales et al. Trends in antipsychotic use of dementia 1999-2007. Archives of
General Psychiatry 68 (2), February 2011
S. M. McClintock et al. Residual symptoms in depressed outpatients who
respond by 50% but do not remit to antidepressant medication. Journal of
Clinical Psychopharmacology 31 (2)April 2011
The stats and sources for the information that antipsychotic drugs often lead to
blood clots and death was published on www.naturalnews.com April 4, 2011 by
J. Benson.
The report that Big Pharma is stepping back from even developing psychiatric
drugs because of cost, liability etc. was originally published in Science on July
10, 2010. An analysis of this article and subsequent events was published by
Garry Cooper in Psychotherapy Networker, an on-line publicationgoogle.
The move by US President Obama to reduce patent years for drugs was widely
reported. For a summary and sources see Jonathan Benson at
www.naturalnews.com for February 21, 2011.
The details on US spending on healthcare were published widely; my source is
Mark Whitehouse in a mailing by croft.woodruff@gmail.com on April 12, 2011.
The story about Ireland, Japan and Egypt banning GMO crops came from news
service georgefreund@hotmail.com on April 21, 2011 and contained many
websites as sources.
The salt reduction story was published on January 13, 2011 in Circulation, the
journal of the American Heart Association; my information comes from the
summary provided in www.sciencedaily.com of January 14, 2011. This is a daily
free internet service that provided the latest news published in scientic journals
throughout the world.
The story about Quebecs largest union announcing it no longer supports the
mining of asbestos was reported in the Montreal Gazette on March 10, 2011 (by
Michelle Lalonde).
The US governments decision to phase out the use of dental amalgam due to
the toxicity of mercury comes from www.bolenreport.com dated April 5, 2011
The fact that Ontarios ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides is showing
improvement in Ontarios water, and the decision to ban 2,4-D in Ontario
despite Health Canadas decision to judge it to be harmless was reported on
CBC news on April 20, 2011.
J. S. Ross et al. Smoking behaviour, involuntary smoking, attitudes towards
smoke-free legislations, and tobacco control activities in the European Union.
PLoS One, on January 5, 2011, vol. 5 (11). Free on-line.
For a brief summary on how environmental medicine expert Dr. William J. Rea
defeated the Texas Medical Board as well as succeeded in suing them is found in
the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients Feb/March 2011 page 95.
For the Texas Health Freedom bill go to the website of National Health Freedom
Federation, April 11, 2011.
On children spontaneously sharing prizes fairly: Association for Psychological
Science, February 11, 2011
R.N. Davis et al. Fathers depression related to positive and negative parenting
behaviors with 1-year old children. Pediatrics, April 2011.
A report on a 2009 paper in Quarterly Review of Biology by Eva Jablonka on
how we can traumatize our DNA and that heredity is not only under genetic
control but also inuence by behavior, was discussed in an interview published
on www.sciencedaily.com on March 23, 2011.
The success scored by an indigenous villager, Maria Aguinda, against the giant
oil company Chevron in Ecuador was widely reported. I relied on a summary
report from georgefreund@hotmail.com
M.K. Johnson et al. A new trait on the market: honesty-humility as a unique
predictor of job performance. Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 50 (6),
April 2011.
The information on how human brains are 98% similar can be accessed for free
on www.brain-map.org. The summary of the story about the Allen Human Brain
Atlas comes from www.sciencedaily.com April 12, 2011.
The story about satised, engaged people being more likely to vote than
unhappy people was published by P. Flavin & M.J. Keane under the title Life
Satisfaction and Political Participation: Evidence from the United States in the
Journal of Happiness Studies, April 20, 2011.
That physicians empathy is directly related to clinical results was published in
the March 2011 issue of Academic Medicine; the summary comes from
www.sciencedaily.com March 8, 2011.
The story on positive emotions reducing stress hormones and inammation was
published by A.D. Ong. Pathways linking positive emotion and health in later life.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 19 (6), 2010.
The January 2011 issue of the Journal of Occupational Psychology published an
article on Resilience on the battleeld: Soldiers with a positive outlook less
likely to suffer anxiety, depression. Summarized on www.sciencedaily.com Jan 5,
2011.
The results of the 20-year study called The Longevity Project were
summarized on www.sciencedaily.com, March 12, 2011
The Intelligent Revolution
March 2010
Hes a man way out there in the blue,
riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they
start not smiling backthats an earthquake.
Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller
Saying No! is a social responsibility none of us may safely ignore.
Heroes reveal the fact of oppression and demand opposition; their
example helps us to build courage, but in the end each one of us must
act personally.
Farmer Michael Schmidt, who was recently acquitted of all
charges brought against him by Health Canada on the raw milk
issue, took part in a health freedom panel at the Total Health Show
in March. While there, he stated that the only way to achieve change
in the current food and drug regulatory system which favour corpo-
rate interests over human rights and scientic evidence, is to say
No! to the bureaucrats assumption of obedience. It drives them
crazy!, he said. Schmidt was sharing the panel with Health Canada
rebel Dr. Shiv Chopra, lawyer Shawn Buckley of the Natural Health
Products Protection Association, and world-famous cancer-industry
debunker Ralph Moss.
Saying No! becomes effective when one employs three tools: the
uncovering of suppressed facts, the demonstration of regulations con-
travening mandatory procedure and current law, and the soliciting of
public response to misinformation campaigns. It is this reasoned
method of cutting through the BS and insisting on informed con-
sent that drives them crazy. Complaining that the world is going
to hell , or despairing over what some great cabal of crooks are going
to do next merely feeds that corruption.
Over the past couple of years, public opposition to corporate agen-
das aiming to make people into consumers and nothing but (at great
cost to health and environment) has gained momentum. Indeed, the
famous Flynn Effect appears to be validated. It states that average
intelligence rises with every generation in all measurable areas of
cognition, language/semantics, and memory. This effect has been
measured in all cultures. I am especially impressed by the intelligence
that people demonstrate in the art of saying No! They trust their own
judgment and ignore experts in droves. Here are some inspiring
examples of vital signicance because they are funded by govern-
ments and institutions whose focus was forced to shift by overwhelm-
ing evidence.
Patients Abandon Their Prescriptions
The University of Saskatchewan found that women, especially, have
been avoiding taking their antidepressants despite the fact that the
numbers of prescriptions increased: they either dont ll them or dont
take them once lled.
Less than 1% of women who have survived estrogen-dependent
breast cancer actually take their prescribed Tamoxifen, the drug that
supposedly prevents recurrence of breast cancer but has a high
chance of causing liver and uterine cancer instead. The National
Cancer Institute in the U.S. was so astonished by this statistic, they
launched a study into the reasons for this outbreak of superior female
intelligence.
Not only patients are wising up. The former pundits of medical
orthodoxy are announcing truths most Vitality readers have known
for some time. For example, the American Cancer Society no longer
supports mammograms as an effective tool for breast cancer preven-
tion, nor PSA testing for prostate cancer screening.
Governments React To Healthcare Fraud
The European Union published the results of a multi-year mega study
late last year, entitled Healthy Living is the Best Revenge. It showed
that people who didnt smoke, exercised moderately, ate fresh fruit,
vegetables, whole grains, and nuts, and ate very little meat reduced
their risk of diabetes by 93%, heart attacks by 81%, and the incidence
of all cancers by 36%. Interestingly, around the same time President
Obama called for a total ban on candy and soda in the nations schools
in February and is considering crippling taxes for such products.
Some governments acted outright heroically: Sweden banned all
uses of mercury last year, which means the rest of the EU will have no
choice but to do the same soon. The vaccine industry must be in
shock (what will they use as preservatives now?), and those 50% of EU
dentists who still use mercury amalgam must be assessing their
options nervously.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley recently disarmed the agen-
da of Big Pharma when he introduced a bill that would require Big
Pharma to publish all payments made to doctors and researchers
above $50. And he has bi-partisan supportMassachusetts pre-empt-
ed Congress and already requires publication of all payments over $5!
I anticipate a disproportionately low death rate and dramatic
decrease in healthcare expenditures for that State.
In January of this year, Senator Grassley exposed Glaxo
SmithKlines fraudulent science. Turns out that the diabetes drug
Avandia is based on no science at all and GSK was proven to have
lied to the FDA regulators and the public, killing thousands (Avandia
increases the risk of heart attacks by 43% in diabetics). GSK now faces
liability storms similar to those that shook Pzer with a ne of $2.3
billion due to the fraud uncovered with regard to the painkiller
Bextra, the antipsychotic drug Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the
antidepressant Lyrica. Additional revelations included Merck fabri-
cating an entire bogus medical journal to support its disastrous anti-
inammatory drug Vioxx, and sales for Pzers rival drug Celebrex
were boosted by a study which reported results gathered by a
renowned expert, Dr. Scott Reuben, based on no patients at all. The
entire study was fakedas were this researchers studies on Bextra
and rival company Mercks Vioxx. This takes science ction to quite
a new level.
Research Exposes Big Pharma
The complex edice of lies, which often fatally misled many desper-
ate patients for many years, is crumbling so fast that I nd it difcult
to keep up with the relevant publications.
The American Journal of Psychiatry recently published the results of
a huge study showing that sudden death in children increases by
about 500% when taking ADHD drugs, of which Ritalin is the best-
known. The researchers who undertook this study set out, explicitly,
to disprove such a connection and were forced by the evidence to
admit the opposite. This data caused something of a house-re in the
mansions of psychiatry: researchers Greenberg and Kirsch published
bestselling books showing that a whole class of antidepressant drugs
are actually not much different in their effects on depression than
placeboi.e. sugar pills. However, what they do cause is personality
changes, including extreme violence and a dramatic increase in the
rate of suicide, as psychiatrist Peter Breggin testied a few weeks ago
before the U.S. Congress.
Last year, The New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical
Journal, the Mayo Clinic, JAMA, the Lancet , the Journal of Clinical
Oncology, Cancer, and the PLoS-Medicine (open-access on-line jour-
nal), all published exhaustive re-analyses of large databases showing
that the most vital information on the dangers of drugs mysteriously
is missing in virtually all patient information, that 94% of all positive
information on Big Pharma products comes from authors who are
nancially compromised, nearly 29% of all cancer studies are thus
nancially conicted and unreliable, and the claims for survival in
cancer therapy studies were essentially wishful thinking at best.
The proposal that caused my jaw to drop and left me (almost)
speechless appeared on April 1 last year, but it is was not a joke.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was
authored by the editors of the worlds leading medical journals and
provided a proposal for controlling conicts of interest. If anybody
had asked me how to accomplish such control, I would have recom-
mended a complete ban on pharmaceutical and medical device
industry funding . To my astonishment, that is exactly what these
editors recommended! The above is a quote from them, not from
yours truly. JAMAs list of revolutionary demands included the follow-
ing: that the education of doctors must be carefully distinguished
frommarketing (who will fund medical conferences?) and that med-
ical organizations should no longer accept money from Big Pharma
at all; such fundamental reforms were stated as being imperative
because otherwise the public trust is, well, down the toilet. I didnt
think I would live long enough to read something like this in JAMA.
Speaking of public trust, here is a zinger! Early in March, Dr. Poul
Thorsen disappeared along with $2 million in research money. The
money is nothing compared to the importance of the doctor. He pub-
lished a series of studies, starting in 2003, that supposedly proved that
the MMR vaccine cannot cause autism. Using the large government
database of Denmark as his source, Thorsen misrepresented the data
showing that Denmark supposedly experienced a 20-fold increase in
autism after mercury was banned there as a vaccine preservative.
Therefore, mercury could not be the cause of childhood autism. In
March, new reports appeared showing Thorsens studies to be fraud-
ulent; so he took off with what money was still in the cash box.
Revolt
Unlike Dr. Thorsen, one of the key researchers into the Gardasil vac-
cine Cevarix, Dr. Diane Harper, said No! to her employers and went
public. She had worked on the development of this vaccine, which
supposedly protects against cervical cancer. But then she became a
whistle blower and informed the UKs Sunday Express and the New
York Times that this vaccine does nothing but possibly prevent genital
warts and will not decrease cervical cancer rates at all. She also stated
that this vaccine was being over-marketed and that parents of young
girls should know that it carries the danger of serious side effects. Dr.
Harper recalled that Merck had lobbied every opinion leader, womens
group, medical society, politician, and went directly to the people it
created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now
The last place I would have expected a resounding No! to come
from is the German army. In Germany, obedience to authority is a
virtue. Last September, when the H1N1 hysteria gripped the world,
Germanys soldiers said Nein, danke! and refused the vaccine. That
prompted Germanys Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, chair of the Council of
Europes 47-nation Sub-Committee on Health, to launch an investiga-
tion into the vaccine and the pandemics origins. Its ndings includ-
ed testimony from key researchers of the World Health Organization.
The Sub-Committee ended up declaring that the pandemic is a
hoax and the vaccine is a bust. Dr. Wodarg said that people are
much cleverer than the government and gured it out for them-
selves, and so less than 6% of the citizens of France and Belgium, for
example, took the vaccine. Even in Japan, where obedience also tends
to be regarded a virtue, only a tiny minority took it.
With regard to food safety, refusal to put up with business as usual
was also unexpected and dramatic. The National Cancer Institute
took on the food industry, declaring that restaurant meats are high in
carcinogens and that foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids essentially
reverse the risk for prostate cancer.
The U.S. food industry voluntarily stopped the use of bovine
growth hormonea cause to which Dr. Shiv Chopra devoted most of
his rebellious career at Health Canada. That long battle which he and
his colleagues waged also publicized the cancer-producing effect on
humans from food-producing animals given prophylactic antibiotics
throughout their lives, as is the norm in industrial farming. The
research supporting these ndings has increased all over the world,
and now this practice may soon be history because a natural sub-
stance, chitosan, appears to be a great deal better.
Monsanto was hit as hard as Big Pharma: the BBC reported on
October 15, 2009, that the Supreme Court of France found Monsanto
had lied all along about the safety of its agship herbicide, the
allegedly environmentally safe and harmless Roundup; the European
Union classied it as dangerous to the environment because it is a
carcinogen and environmentally unsafe.
The next blow came from an international team of researchers
who proved that genetically modied corn causes damage to the
heart, the adrenal glands, the spleen, the blood, and is toxic to the
liver. This study certainly was welcome support for a chorus of No!
that greeted the EUs approval of a GM potato for certain restricted
purposes; several countries announced their absolute refusal to coop-
erate with this EU decision.
In India last fall an eggplant war broke out, the res of which were
fanned by our very own Dr. Shiv Chopra who traveled throughout
India explaining GMOs to the crowds. India has several hundred
varieties of this vegetable, a staple in the Indian diet. When India
approved a GMO variety, 11 States declared themselves GMO-free
zones, and a dozen federal cabinet ministers expressed their uncondi-
tional refusal to cooperate. A proposed law limiting freedom of
speech on GMO issues was publicly dismissed as lunacy and is now
under review; although Dr. Chopra suggested it might be useful
because millions of people would crowd the jails and information on
the truth of GMOs would spread unchecked and then pour forth from
Indias jails to rid not only that country, but possibly the world of this
science ction nightmare.
One of the greatest successes was scored by the American people
who rose in protest against a bill proposed by Senator McCain that
would have essentially handed over the natural supplements indus-
try to Big Pharma and abolished the current protective legislation.
Bill S. 3002 was killed on March 10th.
Public Action Works
What can we do to further this process of truth and freedom in
Canada? We can support MP Alex Atamenenkos federal bill C-474
(via www.cban.ca) which would make it mandatory to consider the
trade implications for any genetically modied food product before it
gets Health Canada approval. The fact is, nobody wants to buy this
stuff in Europe, so why grow it?
We can support the NHPPA, which is poised to take legal action
against Health Canada for its arbitrary abuse of natural health prod-
ucts. Visit their website and consider their requests before you pop
that next vitamin capsule. There is intelligent life on planet Earth,
and you can be proof of that fact.
I
www.nhppa.org and www.charterofhealthfreedom.org
www.cban.ca
www.ssristories.com
www.ageofautism.com
http://vaccineresistancemovement.org
Ames, B. N., Low nutrient intake may accelerate the degenerative diseases of
aging through allocation of scarce micronutrients by triage, PNAS, vol. 103 (47)
Nov. 21, 2009
Ames, B.N & McCann, J. C., Vitamin K, an example of triage theory: is
micronutrient inadequacy linked to diseases of aging?, American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition, vol. 90:889 ff, August 19, 2009
Basch, E., The Missing Voice of Patients in Drug-Safety Reporting, New England
Journal of Medicine, vol. 362 (10):865 ff, 2010
Benjamin, C. L. et al. Stimulating the GPR30 Estrogen Receptor with a Novel
Tamoxifen Analogue Activates SF-1 and Promotes Endometrial Cell Proliferation,
Cancer Research, vol. 69, July 1, 2009
Brawley, O. MD, chief medical ofcer of the American Cancer Society on
mammography and the PSA test found to be useless: New York Times, October
21, 2009
Breggin, P. MD, on the negative health effects of psychiatric drugs, including the
drugs used for ADHD, go to www.breggin.com see also report in The
Washington Post, June 16, 2009, article by S. Vedantam
Fanelli, D. et al. How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A
systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data, PLoS ONE, vol. 4 (5),
2009 (open-access e-based international medical journal family)
Ford, E.S. et al. Healthy Living Is The Best Revenge: Findings from the European
Prospective Investigation into Cancer and NutritionPotsdam Study, Archives of
Internal Medicine, vol. 169 (15): 1355 ff, 2009
Epstein, L. H. et al. The Inuence of Taxes and Subsidies on Energy Purchased in
an Experimental Purchasing Study, Psychological Science, February 2010
Understanding Propaganda*
November 2011
Propaganda is form a communication that is aimed
at inuencing the attitude of a community towards some
cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument.
Wikipedia
In medicine, patients are the market force. In that particular court of
public opinion, which is informed by the direct experience of what
has actually worked and what has harmed people, the likes of Jacobs
junk science will inevitably wind up in the garbage heap of medical
history.
And the next time some headline announces that vitamins give
you cancer, and that organic food lacks nutrients, be sure to check out
the real truth behind the headlines for yourself.
The annual Whole Life Expo is upon us again, allowing us to cel-
ebrate freedom of choice in healthcare, learn new ways to take charge
of our bodies and minds, and reafrm our resolve not to let medical
propaganda get us down.
More than ever this year, we need feisty determination to under-
stand the difference between the spin and the facts. Case in point
an absolutely pernicious piece of research was published on
October 10, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, entitled Dietary
Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women. Its publication
was met with heated debates in cyberspace all over the world and
included what, at rst sight, appeared like an over-the-top comment:
This garbage is an insult to garbage! Thinking about it carefully
though, it became apparent to me that the comment actually hits the
*
Originally published under the title: Dietary Supplements Increase Mortality Rate
in Older WomenOr Do They? A Look at the Propaganda Behind the Headlines
mark: this science-challenged and fact-deprived research on dietary
supplements obeys none of the accepted standards of science, and
twists the tools of research to serve no useful purpose. When garbage
doesnt go away it becomes dangerous to health.
In the study, the authors assert that dietary supplements (vita-
mins, minerals) taken by 38,772 women in the Iowa Womens Health
Study, from 1986 to 2004, increased the rate of mortality.
These study results were widely reported in the mainstream media
as if they were the gospel truth. Even the CBC did not stop and ask the
single most important question any health journalist ought to ask:
Does association prove causation in this research? Well, association
never equals causation, as journalism professor Gary Switzer of the
University of Minnesota points out, but reporters fall into that trap
constantly. For example: a lot of people travel on Highway 401 every
day. If somebody were to tabulate how many of them annually suffer
a heart attack, the resulting number would not prove that the 401
causes heart attacks. The logic displayed in the dietary supplements
article is exactly as silly as that.
Probably the most frequently asked question I encounter ishow
do I tell the difference between junk science and real science in med-
icine? The question is of vital importance, and here is your chance to
get an answerwhich will then put you into the empowered frame of
mind with which to thoroughly enjoy the upcoming Expo.
Multiple FlawsIntended?
Here is a short list of what is wrong with this study, and as usual
the truth shall set you free, but in this case it doesnt even hurt rst.
1) The participants were given questionnaires in 1986, 1997, and
2004. The entire research is based on this self-reported material;
none was veried independently, and there was no attempt at a
control group, such as following women who take no supplements
or who took a placebo sugar pill. Since the causes of death record-
ed were many (only deaths by accidents were ruled out from con-
sideration), it is difcult to understand what inuence those vari-
ous supplements actually had. The recorded data oat in a sea of
the undeterminable.
2) No attempt was made to determine the quality of the supple-
ments, whether they were synthetic or natural-based products,
whether the same ones were taken throughout each large time
interval. And given that different participants took different com-
binations and amounts of supplements, nobody knows what was
inuencing what. Between 1986 and 2004 a lot happened in the
supplement and food industries, so the qualitative considerations
would be key if any meaningful association between health/death
and supplements was to be examined scientically.
3) The food portion of the questionnaire made no differentiation
between organic and conventional foodsunderstandable in
1986, but totally inappropriate by 2004. We will never know how
many old ladies gured out they better eat organic and got even
more vitamins, wholly absorbable, than they could possibly know
how to report.
4) Then the data had, of necessity, to be manipulated so that some
sort of correlation could be imagined. As a result, it will be impos-
sible to replicate itthe protocol is anchored in nothing and the
resulting data are jelly. If you cant replicate something in science,
it is by denition fraudulent research.
5) Those who know something about statistical analysis will see
quickly that all the so-called relative risks are meaningless
because they are so low as to be drowned out by the recorded deaths.
6) Although the authors conclude that taking supplements hastens
death, when you look through the data you nd something
extremely funny: in the U.S., women currently have a life expectan-
cy of 80 years; but no less than 50% of the study participants were
still around at 82! Now that is statistically signicant! Did the
media actually read this whole article? Had they done so, they
would have had to headline the news with Supplements found to
extend life expectancy!
This so-called research amounts to a hopeless mess presented with
pompous certainty, but masterfully designed to give an unsubstanti-
ated impression about vitamin and mineral supplements. So, what is
behind this immense effort? It is not enough to assume a sinister and
carefully orchestrated attack from Big Pharma on the constantly
increasing use of dietary supplements, which actually do promote
health and can cure many illnesses. The assumption must be tested.
The Man Behind the Research
By convention, the lead author of a research paper is always the last
person mentioned in the byline list. In this case that is David R.
Jacobs Jr, who received a PhD in mathematical statistics from the
prestigious Johns Hopkins University and then became a professor of
public health in Minnesota. He certainly knows statistics and appears
to know how to make them obey his command.
To my surprise, I found that he was awarded an important honour
in 2006, by the National Institutes of Health, for research published
in 2004 supposedly showing that women with diabetes died more fre-
quently of heart attacks and strokes if they took high doses of vita-
min C. He apparently has been out to prove that vitamins kill you for
a long time. That article is even worse than the one on the Iowa
Womens Health Study. The methods are the same: assertions are
made based on either no sources or on those sources that happen to
t the taskeven discredited items nobody would cite anymore,
which means we have here a master of the use of conrmation
bias, which is exactly opposite from science as generally understood;
careful science is not necessarily unbiased because scientists are
human and prefer certain potential outcomes over others, but they
are trained to look for what disprovesnot only provestheir
hypothesis in order to force themselves to look at all the evidence,
however unreasonable it may appear to them at rst.
In Jacobs 2004 study, again, the diabetes is self-reported, not inde-
pendently diagnosed and conrmed. His team did certain standard
tests on the subjects, but they arrived strictly as self-reported diabetics.
In regards to the vitamin C aspect of the study, Jacobs reports that
high intake is equivalent to 300 mg daily. Yet even back in 2004 the
recommended maximum daily amount for healthy people was 2,000
mg, as published by the U.S. government and Health Canada. The
RDAs were developed after World War II and based on the mythic
healthy 24-year old malebut only in amounts to just prevent actu-
al disease, i.e. scurvy in the case of vitamin C. Soon these RDAs were
found to be so fact-challenged and its guideline authors shown to be
so bent on pursuing conrmation bias while Big Pharma took ever
more control of science and the healthcare market, that they nally
had to cave in to the accumulating tide of scientic data that contra-
dicted their illusions (and their paymasters interests), and they had
to increase the maximum RDA in 2000.
Now, thats four years before this diabetes study was conducted
and Jacobs, a professor of public health, ought to have known that.
Public health research and activities are grounded in government sta-
tistics and public health guidelines. It is impossible that Jacobs did
not know about these government RDA recommendations. It is,
therefore, very strange that he only used about 1/7 of the maximum
recommended dosage for healthy people to conduct his study on sick
people, especially the type of sickness (diabetes) that is generally
acknowledged to be essentially an extreme complication of vitamin C
deciency induced by various factors. Worst of all, diabetics even lose
their limbs to neuropathy because less and less vitamin C is available to
repair and maintain their blood vessels over time, after the pancreas
ceases to make insulin, thereby causing what is called localized scurvy.
Whats ironic here is the fact that the benecial use of vitamin C
in truly high doses has actually prevented diabetic neuropathy and
saved patients legs from amputationthis has been conrmed by
double-blind studies, the gold standard of mainstream medicine
(Gaby p. 1094 ff). Those reports show that amputations were success-
fully prevented, early onset neuropathy was reversed, and heart
attacks and strokes drastically reduced in number due to supplemen-
tation with 1,0002,000+ mg of vitamin C daily, together with prime
cardiovascular nutrient vitamin E, which prevents vitamin C from
being excreted in urine. Is it possible that Jacobs did not know of these
university-based studies? Dare we imagine how many women lost
their feet or legs, or died from strokes and heart attacks, because of
this inexcusable under-dosing with vitamin C?
Now, how about that award Jacobs was given two years later by
the NIH for this wonderful proof that high doses of vitamin C are
more likely to cause strokes and heart attacks in diabetic women? Is
it possible that the illustrious scientists of the NIH did not know about
this contradictory mainstream research, which would have been truly
worthy of an award? The kindest thing to be said is that the NIH has
been shown, time and again, to act in ways that range from the sub-
lime to the ridiculous, and its been known to allow its mandate to be
contaminated by Big Pharma (to the detriment of public health).
Worst of all, there are no drugs whatsoever that have been shown
to prevent or reverse diabetic neuropathy. There are many researchers
who abandon their conscience and then doctor evidence to push an
agenda that runs in the opposite direction from what the experience
of thousands has proven to be true and healing. It would be nice if
the old ladies from the Iowa study and the wheelchair-bound diabet-
ics from the vitamin C study knew what they were being used for
and then went to court. That does happen, of course: doctors have
gone to jail for fabricating data or interpreting them to the detriment
of patients. Best of all, Big Pharma is reeling under the lawsuits
theyve lost time and again, now having earned the dubious distinc-
tion of paying out the largest compensations in all of U.S. legal histo-
ry for the toxic drugs they knew were toxic when they doctored the
evidence to get them to marketand (protably) killed hundreds of
thousands of people in the process (see Elliott).
Thankfully, the reader can sit in judgment of the evidence, check
it out, and compare the information with their own experience. Our
personal judgment determines the so-called market forces. In med-
icine, patients are the market force. In that particular court of public
opinion, which is informed by the direct experience of what actually
works and what harms, the likes of Jacobs junk science will
inevitably wind up in the garbage heap of medical history.
Meanwhile, a small detective effort, such as the one I undertook for
this article, provides you with tools and testable questions.
The next time some headline announces that vitamins give you
cancer, and that organic food lacks nutrients, you will know how to
check out the real truth behind the headlines for yourself.
I
J. Mursu et al (senior author: David R. Jacobs Jr.), Dietary Supplements and
Mortality Rate in Older Women, Archives of Internal Medicine, October 2011
(171/8)
D. Lee et al (senior author: David R. Jacobs Jr.), Does supplemental vitamin C
increase cardiovascular disease risk in women with diabetes?, American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition, 2004 (80/1)
R. F. Cathcart III, MD, Vitamin C, titrating to bowel tolerance, anascorbemia, and
acute induced scurvy, Medical Hypothesis, vol. 7, 1981
S. W. Fowkes, Vitamin C, RDAs and Politics, Smart Drugs News, Aug 1, 1996
C. Poliquin, Flawed Iowa Womens Health Study Used to Discredit Supplements:
Dont Believe It!, on http://www.charlespoliquin.com, October 17, 2011 posting
O. R. Fonorow, Vitamin RDAs raised but Council cautions about overdose, April
2000, download from http://www.vitamincfoundation.org (lists best research on
vitamin C)
J. Neuman et al. Prevalence of nancial conicts of interest among panel
members
producing clinical practice guidelines in Canada and the United States: cross
sectional study, British Medical Journal, (open access, pre-print text), October
2011
A. Gaby MD, Nutritional Medicine, Fritz Perlberg Publishing 2010
C. Gerson, Defeating Obesity, Diabetes and High Blood Pressure, Gerson Health
Media, 2010
Alliance for Natural Health UK & USA http://www.anh-usa.org
Reliable source on vitamin C: Dr. Andrew Saul; subscribe to the free
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service http://www.orthomolecular .org
Re-Occupy Your Body
January 2012
My bodys nobodys body but mine.
You run your own body.
Let me run mine
Peter Alsop, 1983
The Occupy Wall Street movement has frequently been criticized as
having no discernable strategy. That may turn out to be the secret of
its eventual success. This movement is not another plan by a some-
body to save the world, but an invitation to everybody to come to
grips with reality. Indeed, this world-wide phenomenon conspicuous-
ly lacks empty political sound bite solutions. Those have an unholy
way of arousing our most primitive instincts, fuelling demagoguery,
because sound bites lack intellectual nutrients from which to build
clear understanding of complex issues. The movements assertion
that 99% of us are essentially working to keep 1% of us in control of
everything, reminds of the 1980s when the equally simple assertion
was made that all forms of physical trespass are unacceptable
requiring no justifying explanation. Any unpermitted move into
another persons physical space was suddenly understood as poten-
tially abusive. The insight had arrived that we own our bodies
absolutely and that this constitutes a very special kind of property
right: fundamental, like a law of nature. The strategies to help pre-
vent especially sexual abuse of children arose out of this insight, as
the words of that famous song describe.
Similarly, the Occupy Wall Street movement makes conscious an
undeniable fact of mindboggling imbalance and points to its associ-
ated abuse of human rights. Undoubtedly, strategies to correct this sit-
uation will follow, once enough of us truly understand that it is
absurd that the wealth of the world, created by us all from the
resources of our jointly owned home planet, is controlled by just 1%
of the human family. Interestingly, on November 13, 170 economists
from some of the most prestigious universities in the world, expressed
their solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, stating in
their joint press release: We support the efforts of the Occupy Wall
Street movement across the country and across the globe to liberate
the economy from the short-term greed of the rich and powerful one
percent We extend our support to the vision of building an econo-
my that works for the people, for the planet, and for the future, and
we declare our solidarity with the Occupiers who are exercising our
democratic right to demand economic and social justice.
Importantly, once something has been understood, it is not possi-
ble to go back to the time of ignorance and unknow what is known.
The process of change is unstoppable. A status quo recognized as
insupportable never regains its original hold. Enlightenment, curious-
ly, is a one-way street. So, it may not be totally surprising that it is one
of the worlds richest men, Warren Buffet (net worth $ 47 billion) who
recently called upon the US Congress to stop molly-coddling the
super rich and start taxing them properly.
In medicine, the struggle to safeguard individual biological
integrity and autonomy today has become polarized between govern-
ments that obey every wish voiced by Big Pharma and the exponen-
tially increasing research showing that the primary causes of diseases
and death are bad food, most prescription drugs, and a poisoned
environment. Signicantly, recent research from Chinese universities
has shown that crucial segments of the DNA of plants foods survives
the digestion process, escape into the blood stream, and take up resi-
dence in the liver from where they target various cells in the host to
alter gene expression. This means that genetically modied plant
DNA will do so too, as indeed we know it does. We literally become
what we eatincluding healthy, sick or dead. In the same way, ani-
mal products inuenced by genetically altered drugs can cause can-
cer and birth defects in humans, such as milk from cows treated with
bovine growth hormone, a genetically modied substance.
On November 24, three former Health Canada scientists, famous
for refusing to approve this very hormone and other drugs for con-
sumption in Canada, were honored at the 14th annual award cere-
mony by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE); Anna
Maria Tremonti of CBCs The Current, was the host and the recipi-
ents were Shiv Chopra, Margret Haydon, and Gerard Lambert who
had worked together at Health Canada to uphold the Food and Drugs
Act and spent a decade trying to prevent carcinogenic and endocrine
disrupting drugs from entering Canadas food supply. For their deter-
mination to save us from our governments disregard for our right to
physical autonomy, then Prime Minister Paul Martin red them in
2004 for insubordination. Mainly due to these Canadian scientists,
who blew the whistle right around the globe, these drugs were
stopped worldwide. Dr. Chopra, in a CBC interview prior to the award
ceremony, made the point that in a democracy we all must insist on
re-occupying our bodies and refusing this corporate trespass. It is
now generally known that we eat, drink, breathe and handle materi-
als all day long that contain thousands of toxic substances or radiate
us with DNA-zapping microwaves about which we were never
informed and for which we never gave permission to be used in us.
That Health Canada story on toxic drugs, how successive govern-
ments colluded with their manufacturers in complete violation of the
law to unknowingly stuff us with harmful chemicals, and how many
of them were stopped here and abroad, is found in Chopras book,
Corrupt to the CoreMemoirs of A Health Canada Whistleblower. That
book, which was also distributed in India, was key in establishing an
indenite moratorium on GM foods in that country last year. The
struggle is certainly not over against those corporate bullies who tres-
pass against our bodies, but India has begun the re-occupation
process by suing Monsanto for attempting to force GM vegetables
onto its people, calling it bio-piracy. Similarly, in November a
Canadian court ordered Health Canada to study the impact of
Monsantos pesticide Roundup (glyphosate) on amphibians, especial-
ly frogs. Biological integrity depends on the context in which it
evolved and thrives. Personal autonomy is not possible without the
protection of the web of life. Whatever causes the frogs to die out will
undoubtedly kill us too.
One of the longest-running battles against the rape of human
health involves asbestos, the sole cause of one of the most horrible
cancers, mesothelioma (see my article in Vitality February 2008).
Exposure to its micro bers constitutes virtual certainty of developing
that type of lung cancer. Yet, Canada scuttled the recent Rotterdam
Treaty which would have made warning labels on exported asbestos
mandatory so that workers in poor countries (provided they can read)
could make a choice as to what goes into their lungs. Now, as report-
ed in the Globe and Mail on November 24, all asbestos production in
Canada was suspended due to international pressures.
Some signicant developments are taking place on the vaccine
front of aggravated medical assault. Some 77% of doctors report that
parents now request delays in the vaccination schedules for their chil-
dren or outright refuse having them vaccinated. While it has been
known now for some time that about one in ten parents refuse vacci-
nation, what is surprising is the fact that the majority of these polled
doctors expressed their readiness not to push vaccination.
The truly disturbing aspect of the escalating vaccine wars is that
the science underlying the concept of vaccination does not get a
chance to be properly conducted because the criminality of lucrative
vaccine pushing has contaminated the whole enterprise hopelessly.
The entire May 26, 2011, issue of Nature was devoted to the problem
of science, ethics, marketing fraud, the future of vaccine develop-
ment, and strategies for standing up to the skeptics. Those skeptics
(people who have cause to be concerned about vaccine safety) got
support from the EU which found many vaccines associated with too
many serious side effects, such as narcolepsy in children, and restrict-
ed their use. Furthermore, as Natures authors admitted, the unethical
practices in vaccine trials done in Third World countries are unaccept-
able and dont help to build condence, nor does the fact that key
researchers into the safety of MMR vaccines took off with the grant
money after having doctored their data by falsifying autism statistics.
Finally, some astounding revelations recently arrived in the public
domain: documents from May 2008 show that the US Centers for
Disease Control and the vaccine manufacturer Merck are fully aware
that the rubella virus (in the MMR vaccine) is one of the known caus-
es of autism since the 1960s when the World Health Organization
published the relevant researchwhich did not stop Big Pharma from
developing the MMR vaccine and adding the known neurotoxin mer-
cury as a preservative. While the use of the preservative is now out-
lawed, vaccines distributed in the Third World still contain it. Also
known are the biological pathways by which certain predisposed chil-
dren develop autism when injected with the rubella virus. The entire
list of mainstream publications to June 2011 containing this proof of
harm and the legal actions that succeeded in establishing the direct
causal link between MMR vaccines and autism is posted on
www.childhealthsafety.wordpress.com see June 30, 2011.
The abuse of our bodies in the name of some hypothesized greater
public good has reached a low so low, it takes ones breath away. The
US government has approved mass anthrax vaccine trials on chil-
dren, though unlikely to get started any time soon as the public is
outraged already. The chair of the National Biodefense Science Board,
Daniel B. Fagbuy, defended his decision by opining: Do we want to
wait for a [terrorist] attack and give it to millions and millions of chil-
dren and collect data at that time? when it presumably too late.
However, even the most dedicated supporter of vaccines knows that
anthrax does not spread like the u from person to person and is,
therefore, localized and self-limiting. Anything that does not spread
between people is not a realistic vaccine target. To protect those mil-
lions, they all would have had to have been exposed to anthrax
spores singly and individually. Dr. William C. Douglass Jr. observed
on November 28: To test safety you would have to inject a bunch of
children and babies [with anthrax] and see how many are left stand-
ingor crawling. Then, if you have enough kids left, you can start
tinkering with the dose and test for effectiveness. And if you think our
government would never, never do something like thatwell, you
just dont know our government very well.
Being assured by a doctor that a drug is good and then becoming
a statistic of the collateral damage stemming from fraudulent
research, usually not even known to the doctor, is an example of
being sacriced to the interests of the 1%; they gain nancially but
need take no responsibility for the means by which wealth was gen-
erated from the 99% duped or pressured into taking those drugs.
We now know from research done at Harvard Medical School, that
antipsychotic drugs given to children run the high risk of these kids
developing diabetes. (Why children are being given antipsychotics is
in itself incomprehensible.) As reported in The Medical Post on July 12,
2011, the Canadian Pediatric Surveillance Program reported severe,
usually irreversible, often deadly and never seen before adverse drug
events in children from entire classes of drugs: especially anticonvul-
sants, antibacterials, psychoanaleptics and psycholeptics. Dr.
Danielle Grenier observed that Its impossible for clinical trials to
identify all these adverse reactions before drugs are marketed, but
premarketing trials are not always done on children. Health Canada
and the FDA admit that fewer than 25% of all drugs can be advertised
as safe for children. I feel very, very bad that were giving kids drugs
that are not tested. We would never dare do that to an adult.
Well, actually modern medicine does horrible things like that to
adults, too. Adults are told lies about drugs that were found to be dan-
gerous when tested but marketed nevertheless. Then, when the funer-
als are over, the bank accounts fattened, and critical thought and
troubling questions arise, the truth eventually comes out and those
who speak for the dead and maimed go to court. GlaxoSmithKline
agreed to pay nes to the tune of $ 3 billion in November for wrong-
ful advertising, untruthful marketing practices, defrauding Medicare,
and the like. This is the second such agreement in just one year. A few
months earlier the nes were in the hundreds of millions.
In November, the Whole Life Expo celebrated its 25th anniversary.
What struck me as most interesting and encouraging was the fact
that so many people are aware of all this sleaze and the good science
as well. Ten years ago people asked questions only at my boothnow
they tell me things I write down for further follow-up!
The trust in the systemany systemappears to be fading fast.
More and more people are taking charge of their health, ask ques-
tions and refuse to cooperate blindly. The support for the Charter of
Health Freedom written by lawyer Shawn Buckley of the Natural
Health Products Protection Association is a good measure for this shift
in public opinion. Signatures are close to 100,000 now (to sign go to
www.NHPPA.org ). Back in the 1970s, it took 600,000 names on that
famous petition that resulted in us getting our constitution in the
1980s, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A great many of us have
decided to re-occupy our bodies and lives and assert our birthright
freedom of choice. May 2012 continue this trend!
I
S. Chopra, Corrupt to the CoreMemoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower,
Kos, 2009, call 519-927-1049
Scientists Under AttackGenetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money,
2011 documentary lm by Betram Verhaag, Yes! Books, 641-209-1765, or go to
info@SeedsofDeception.com
The Chinese research on food plant DNA inuencing gene expression in
humans was published in CAPE News, November 30, 2011 (Canadian
Physicians for the Environment) and the research can be read on www.i-
sis.org.uk/SO_genetics.php
Economists supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement
www.crooksandliars.com
The court order regarding Roundup and amphibians: Canadian Association of
Physicians for the Environment, Nov. 22, 2011
Stats on changing attitudes about vaccines and the anthrax story
www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk, October 3, November 28, 2011
See also May 21 and November 7, 2011, www.bolenreport.com
Unethical vaccine trials in Third World countries, Nature, June 23, 2011
On EU restrictions on vaccines for children see The Medical Post, August 16,
2011, and Dr. Mercolas website May 26, 2011 on Gardasil associated with a
and 41% higher rate of death in girls
Fraud and MMR vaccines, criminal prosecution of the lead researchers is on Dr.
Mercolas website, May 22, 2011
History of MMR vaccine development and its underlying fraud: David Kirby,
Evidence of Harm, St. Martins Press, 2005
The nes imposed on GlaxoSmithKline www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk, November
3, 2011
Antipsychotics causing diabetes: Pediatrics, December 2011
2012 A Year of Revelations In Healthcare
December 2012
All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer, 17881860
The news discussed in this article isnt actually new. Whats new is
that this information is now seen as news. My October and November
Vitality features gave examples of mainstream researchers and clini-
cians who are reporting on how toxic and useless most drugs are. My
earlier articles showed only the tip of the iceberg.
What is denitely new is that those responsible for the spin are los-
ing control. Something is stopping the Semmelweis Reex, named
after the Hungarian doctor who demonstrated that maternal deaths
were reduced ten-fold when doctors washed their hands before deliv-
ering babies. Ignaz Semmelweis (18181865) met with determined
opposition led by then-leading gynecologist, Charles D. Meigs, who
dismissed hand-washing because doctors are gentlemen, and gentle-
mens hands are clean. Semmelweis responded, The facts cannot be
changed, and denying the truth only increases guilt.
The Semmelweis Reex is in evidence whenever established norms
are afrmed in the teeth of contradictory evidence. It is also called
conrmation bias, i.e., when only conrmatory evidence is reex-
ively sought to silence contradictory facts. Psychologists refer to cog-
nitive dissonance to describe the emotional pain caused by irrecon-
cilable conicting information: you may believe vaccines are good,
but you also read the vaccine manufacturers list of toxic preserva-
tives and now what? Or you may try calming your fears about a
drugwhich is under attack from international class action lawsuits
because of many reported deathsby reassuring yourself that your
doctor must know what he/she is doing. Accepting the possibility that
doctors do not necessarily know what they are doing causes mental
indigestion.
This year it was challenging to keep up with the ood of revelations
and the amazing reversals in many mainstream medical attitudes.
For the rst time, Consumer Reports investigated hospital safety
this year. And the British Medical Journal informed readers that only
11% of all current medical treatments used in North America and
Europe can be shown to be benecialthe rest is likely to lead to
harm, accounting for the roughly 200,000 annual deaths from prop-
erly prescribed drugs in American hospitals; and the additional 1.4
million patients who are seriously harmed by pharmaceuticals in the
U.S. alone. Altogether more than three million deaths are known to be
related to prescription drugs, properly taken as prescribed. A statistical
analysis in 2009 showed that in the U.S., deaths from pharmaceutical
drugs now annually exceed those from trafc-related accidents.
Whats newsworthy here is the fact that magic bullets are more
like bullets and less like magic; the miracle cures which modern med-
icine kept promising decade after decade have been revealed as noth-
ing more than marketing spin. Most standard drugs, diagnostic tests,
therapies, and preventive protocols are saturated with the stench of
fraud, consumer exploitation, and coercion spun from fear-monger-
ing and even the outright invention of diseasesas if we dont have
enough of them already!
The image that comes to mind is the scene in The Wizard of Oz
when Dorothy, her dog Toto, Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Woodsman
arrive in the throne room of the great Wizard of Oz. Toto knocks over
the screen behind which hides an insignicant fellow who had pre-
tended for so long to be Oz the Great and Terrible and who now
admits: Im a humbug. He explains how he became hopelessly
entangled in a web of pretenses. No... Im a very good man, Oz tells
Dorothy, Im just a very bad Wizard. (Lets add that to the
Hippocratic Oath to help doctors remember that they may be good
people but denitely are always lousy wizards.)
Donald W. Light and Joel R. Lexchin from Princeton and York uni-
versities, respectively, performed a remarkable equivalent of Totos
revelatory action this year. It was published on August 7 in the British
Medical Journal under the title Pharmaceutical research and develop-
ment: what do we get for all that money? The authors examined the
so-called innovation crisis in drug development and found that it is a
total myth.
Even Pzer, now the worlds largest pharmaceutical company,
stated so in 2005 showing that drug innovation (as dened by the
industry, not as the patient experiences it) has proceeded at roughly
the same pace since 1970. While it is perfectly true that not many
new active synthetic molecules have been developed over the past
four decades, lots of drugs came to market with no clinical advantage
over older non-patented drugs.
Between 1978 and 1989, only 34 (15.6%) of the drugs on the mar-
ket were judged by independent investigators to be of therapeutic use-
fulness. Examining approximately the same period, the industry itself
(!) concluded that only 11% of their products were innovative and clin-
ically useful. All independent reviews covering that same four-decade
period put it the other way around, stating that between 85 and 90% of
all new drugs had few or no clinical advantage at all. Talk of humbug!
The U.S. National Science Foundation looked at just how much of
the billions upon billions of Big Pharma revenues are actually used
for research and development. It boggles the mind to learn that only
1.3% of all that money goes to research and development. Instead,
most of those huge revenues go to marketing (e.g., $4 billion annual-
ly just in free samples and gifts to doctors, who also may get about
$20,000 per patient they enroll in drug trials).
The actual cost of searching for new drugs is borne entirely by the
taxpayer. So huge amounts of our tax dollars go toward the develop-
ment of drugs that neither cure nor prevent death, and are actually
the cause of thousands of deaths annuallyin fact we pay for our
own leading cause of death (rst for research and then at the phar-
macy) and also help bankrupt Medicare which is swamped with the
increasing tide of disabling drug side effects.
In their report, Light and Lexchin then zeroed in on what is sup-
posedly new. Turns out that over the past three decades, Big Pharma
has ne-tuned its manipulation of governments to achieve more and
longer patent protection for drugs that mostly dont work and tend to
do harm. Governments also protect Big Pharma from free market
forces such as competition from generic manufacturers. Thus, Big
Pharma is constantly rewarded for bad or useless drugs under the pre-
text of serving the public interest.
On October 18, Macleans Magazine reported on Oakville MP
Terence Youngs address to the Canadian Senate. He described the sit-
uation in Canada like this: at least 20,000 die annually in hospitals
from properly prescribed and administered drugs; about another
150,000 are victims of serious side effects from the 4,852 prescription
drugs Health Canada allows on the market. Indeed, in 1997 Big
Pharma replaced Canadian citizens as the client of Health Canada
which is now mandated to protect trade secrets. Therefore, with per-
verse logic, the Health Protection Branch changed its name in 2000 to
Marketed Health Products Directorate.
MP Young has now tabled a Bill that calls for the establishment of
an Independent Drug Agency wholly responsible to the public, not to
industry. That is a truly great idea. However, he works for the wrong
boss: Stephen Harper promised similar reforms in 2004 (I was a recip-
ient of his letter), but has since joined forces with Big Pharma, as we
all saw during the public uproar over the proposed changes to the
Food and Drugs Act (e.g., Bill C-51). Now the Harper government has
even fast-tracked the drug approvals process and removed virtually
all safeguards against harm.
But, wait! People arent stupid and not all medical research is con-
trolled by Big Money. Not everybody is looking for illusory conrma-
tion of the status quo. Some are willing to cut through the B.S. That a
Conservative MP tells truths that y in the face of his partys policies
is a shining example. Here is some more to warm our the cockles of
our hearts this Christmas.
On November 12, the Annals of Internal Medicine published an
analysis of 20 randomized controlled studies on the use of probiotics
to control and prevent those nasty hospital bugs, Clostridium difcile.
(Ontario had recorded 75 outbreaks in 47 hospitals between 2009 and
2011.) Using probiotics and yogurts reduces such events. Probiotics
are not a magic bullet, but these results suggest... certain yogurts
may be vastly under-used in nursing homes and hospitals said lead
author, Dr. Bradley Johnston, a scientist and assistant professor at the
Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. He looks
barely older than my grandchildren and brought to mind the obser-
vation by physicist Max Planck: A scientic truth does not triumph
by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation
grows up that is familiar with it.
The current saber-rattling about mandatory vaccination got a ter-
ric body blow from prestigious mainstream and independent review-
ers, the Cochrane Collaboration. They reviewed all the worlds pub-
lished and unpublished literature on u vaccine effectiveness and
found that it isnt effective after all. This must have sent Big Pharma
into overdrive to defend this vitally important sacred super-cash cow.
Public health authorities in BC proclaimed the u vaccine 60% effec-
tive and alleged that all the major medical journals worldwide are
calling for mandatory vaccination, especially for health care workers.
Cochranes vaccine expert, Tom Jefferson, published a response in
the Vancouver Sun (November 12) stating that there isnt a shred of
evidence to support BCs ideologically driven policies, pointing out
that no records of u-related deaths are kept and hence touting u
vaccines as saving lives is pure fantasy. He also demanded proof for
those alleged journal calls for mandatory vaccination, stating there
are none whatsoever published! Jefferson observed, many things
work in theory, but real evidence suggests they are not having the
desired effect. Up to 99 adults would have to be vaccinated before
one was protected against the u. Amazingly, there is also no evi-
dence to support the belief that vaccination prevents person-to-person
transmission. What the evidence does show, though, is that u shots
given to pregnant women have increased fetal deaths by 4,250%
since 2009.
Cancer medicine offered some surprises, too. The fact that work-
place exposure to toxins can cause breast cancer was widely reported
in the media. This was nothing new to Vitality readers (see list of my
articles on this issue in the Sources), but it was new that the Canadian
Breast Cancer Foundation supported this information, reversing their
decades-long silence on environmental carcinogens.
However, the nonsense about mammography saving lives contin-
ues in the media, but not in the science journals. On November 22,
the venerable New England Journal of Medicine published a three-
decade review by Drs Bleyer and Welch, surgeons and experts in med-
ical statistics, on the effect of mammography on cancer incidence.
The result: at least 31% of all cancer diagnoses were found to be false
positives that resulted in unnecessary surgery, chemo, and radiation.
In the U.S. in 2008 alone, 700,000 women were treated for cancers
they didnt have. What this NEJM article did not discuss, but is also
published by experts like Swedish Right Livelihood Award recipient
Samuel Epstein of the University of Chicago, is the increased risk of
developing breast cancer from the radiation exposure caused by hav-
ing regular mammograms.
On November 14, the Journal of the American Medical Association
published the results of two large randomized controlled studies
designed to see if taking multivitamins reduces cancer incidence and
cardiovascular disease. The surprise is not that vitamins did make a
big difference, but that these trials were conducted at all and that the
data werent fudged! Then I thought I was hallucinating when I read,
in the straight-laced Medical Post on October 9, that integrative can-
cer therapy is becoming the norm in Canada as provincial govern-
ments fund acupuncture, nutrition, meditation, etc., for cancer
patients and even refer to these therapies as evidence-based! Not
too long ago, merely suggesting them as adjuncts to standard thera-
py caused doctors to lose their licenses!
The ght against junk food has taken a turn to cheer the most
depressed pessimist: the Ontario Medical Association announced in
October that disease-causing junk food must be fought just like the
successful battle against cigarettes was, by taxing high-sugar, high-
fat, low-nutrient junk foods. They attacked even industry advertising
to children and want it outlawed. Three cheers for the OMA! Also,
remember that in 1995 Torontos Dr. Carolyn Dean had her license
revoked by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for pub-
licly discussing the science on how excessive sugar consumption caus-
es diabetes. The revocation was based on a complaint from the
Canadian Sugar Institute. (Google Glasnost Report 2001.)
Meanwhile, Europes Alliance for Natural Health showed that
mega-vitamin intake is so safe that you are 900 times more likely to
die from food poisoning and 300,000 times more likely from prevent-
able medical injury. The U.S. Poison Control report still didnt have
any deaths to record for the 27th year running. Gore Vidal might be
right here: The four most beautiful words in our common language:
I told you so.
Are we passing into that third stage that the self-evident
Schopenhauer spoke of? Indeed, it seems that we begin to agree that
putting toxic chemicals into people who are already sick is not a good
business plan; that junk foods lead to medical emergencies; that life-
supporting vitamins and probiotics can prevent disease and achieve
a lasting truce between pathogens and us; that u shots are harmful
and expensive mythology.
Evidence isnt a matter of choice anymore, controlled by those
who pay for the best evidence money can buy. As for protecting the
public, those Wizards of Ottawa are found out to be downright silly:
our government policies are embarrassing in their blatant disregard
for medical science and mendacious support of Big Money. Wizards
everywhere are turning into humbugs.
I
The British Medical Journal has a helpful website
http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp
Researchers Joel R. Lexchin and Donald W. Light provide ongoing information
on www.pharmamyths.net Their BMJ article was published on August 7, 2012.
Alan Cassels, Seeking Sickness, Greystone, 2012
H.G. Welch, OverdiagnosedMaking People Sick in the Pursuit of Health,
Beacon, 2011
A. Bleyer & H.G. Welch, Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography
on Breast Cancer Incidence, New England Journal of Medicine vol. 367:1998 f,
November 22, 2012
P. G. Gotzsche, Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy, Radcliffe
2012. The author is a member of the only truly independent mainstream
watchdog of medical research, The Cochrane Collaboration, of whom vaccine
expert Tom Jefferson is also a member and who is cited in this article regarding
the spin on the u vaccine. This complete review of all that is known on
mammography and its dangers and unreliability appeared this summer.
S.S. Epstein, Cancer-Gate: How to Win the Losing Cancer War, Baywood, 2005
S.S. Epstein, National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society: Criminal
Indifference to Cancer Prevention and Conicts of Interest, a report published
2011 available on his website
The report on MP Terence Youngs presentation to the Standing Committee on
Health in Ottawa is in the October 18 issue of Macleans Magazine under the
title A National Embarrassment by A. Kingston & J. Roberts. Go to MP Youngs
website for more.
B. Johnston, et al., Probiotics for the Prevention of Clostridium difcile
Associated Diarrhea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, Annals of Internal
Medicine, Nov. 12, 2012
The Medical Post, MDs debate merits of complementary cancer care by R.
Frei, October 9, 2012
The article by the Cochrane Collaboration scientists T. Jefferson was in the
Vancouver Sun, November 19, 2012. His exhaustive report on the effectiveness
of u vaccines (or lack thereof) is available online from www.attentiallebufale.it or
by Googling Cochrane Collaboration + vaccine safety. Title: Inuenzae
Reviewer, Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group and Cochrane Vaccine
Field, 2012
The information on the 4,350% increase in fetal deaths from u vaccines go to
Vactruth.com, entry for November 23, 2012
The safety of vitamins over the past three decades: www.naturalsociety.com,
feature on October 3, 2012
A. Saul, editorial in Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, vol. 25, number 4,
2010: When Evidence is a Choice.
J.E. Prousky, editorial in Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine vol. 27, number 1,
2012: Toxicology of Vitamins.
See www.mercola.com on November 5, 2012 for details on Consumer Reports
on hospital safety, drug deaths, etc., The Consumer Reports article was
published August 2012. The information on the safety of supplements comes
from Alliance for Natural Health in the UK.
J.M. Gaziano et al. Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cancer in Men, JAMA
Nov. 14, 2012 p. 1871 ff
H. D. Sesso et al. Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in
Men, JAMA Nov. 7, 2012
Ontario Medical Review, October 2012, was dedicated to the issue of obesity
and published the OMA Policy position on this subject.
H. Branswell, Exposure to workplace chemicals can increase breast cancer
risk, Canadian Press, Nov. 19, 2012. See also:
R. Smith & B. Lourie, Slow Death by Rubber DuckHow the Toxic Chemistry of
Everyday Life affects our Health, Vintage (2009) paperback 2010 (reviewed in
Vitality by Helke Ferrie, September 2009)
M. Schapiro, ExposedThe Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and Whats at
State for American Power, Chelsea Green, 2007 (Vitalitys lead feature was on
this book in its December 2007 issue)
T. Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future, Plume/Penguin, 1997
The information on doctors in Ontario who lost their licenses for issues
pertaining to junk food, acupuncture, nutritional support for cancer patients,
environmental sources of cancer, etc., is found in Glasnost Report 2001
Google.
Navigating Mine Fields Cheerfully
February 2013
Find the good, and praise it.
Alex Haley (19211992), author of Roots
Fifteen years ago, nding the good in medical research was very
much harder than it is nowbut it existed. Today, the conscience of
medicine appears to be rising from its ashes. In the 1950s and 60s,
the leading medical journals published superb research showing how
even the worst diseases can be prevented and treated with methods
that often rely on nutritional medicine, and do not involve synthetic
drugs. Those published cures of polio, cancer, and infection (without
antibiotics) were never disproven, they just mysteriously became
unfashionable.
Starting in the 1970s, the spin and industry-funded propaganda
announced more and more miracle drugs. By 1978, pharmaceuticals
were traded on the stock market and now sickness (not health)
became a commodity. Inhibitors, promoters, catalyzers, gene modu-
lators, hormone mimickers, balancers of fantasized chemical imbal-
ances, and poisoners of enzymatic pathways to control symptoms of
unknown origins became the standard. Almost everybody got sucked
into this high-tech disease-for-prot mythology.
Doctors unwilling to praise this development as being good, and
who remained far from the madding crowd, were marched into disci-
plinary trials in the U.S. and Canada, usually losing their licenses in
spite of no patients harmed and despite documented cures. Some
managed to survive, especially in universities, and carried on good
research that helped people.
It is instructive to recall Hans Christian Andersens tale, The
Emperors New Clothes. In it, a child exclaims that the emperor in
the parade is buff naked and everybody else agrees, but the emper-
or thinks to himself, I must go through with this procession. And so
he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter
than ever, and carried his train which did not exist at all.
The medical profession had been carrying on a similar exercise in
self delusion for decades, that is until the delusion was blown apart
by an explosive statistic in 1998. The powerful aftershocks of this
have continued ever since; and this seismic activity has been report-
ed by me during many years spent writing for Vitality.
Explosion!
In 1998, the University of Torontos Bruce Pomeranz and his team
published evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association
that properly prescribed drugs, taken as directed, had become the
fourth leading cause of death in America. This explosive statistic had
been obtained directly from the U.S. FDAs own enormous database.
By 2007, when the next large-scale analysis of pharmaceutical out-
comes was undertaken, deaths and adverse events had increased 2.7
fold and a public health disaster was recognized. In January 2013, the
Institute of Medicine published a report showing that even wealthy
Americans are sicker than people in the 16 most afuent countries.
The U.S. also spends far more money on healthcare than any other
country.
In his 2012 book Unaccountable, Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine researcher, shows how mining sickness
for prot makes everybody unaccountablehence the books title.
The book goes on to outline a description of how hospitals are a
major cause of death, and how at least 30% of conventional health-
care is unnecessary and leads to deadly harm. Almost half of what
doctors do is not in synch with the published research evidence, and
the resulting mistakes are the fth leading cause of deathprescrip-
tion drugs stand at second, depending on which data bases are con-
sulted. The cause? The corporatization of health care. We need to
change the culture of medicine, says Dr. Makary.
On Toxic Testing and the Corporatization of Medicine
A major contributing cause of death is known to be overdiagnosis
(actually: misdiagnosis) from tests that claim to serve prevention
including the PSA test for prostate cancer, and mammography
screening for breast cancer. Both of these tests have resulted in many
false positives and unnecessary surgeries. Furthermore, the risk of
cancer has been proven to increase in women who get regular mam-
mographies, due to repeated exposures to radiation. (The levels of
radiation have now been reduced after U.S. radiologists themselves
raised hell about it. The level are still too high, thoughradiation on
human tissue is bad, period.) In fact, one of the many seismic shifts
in medicine occurred when the Canadian Medical Association Journal
published an editorial by Cochrane Collaboration researcher, Peter C.
Gotzsche, on October 22, 2011, in which he stated: The best method
we have to reduce the risk of breast cancer is to stop the screening pro-
gram.
The drug, medical device, and testing industriesas well as the
food and chemical industrieshave succeeded in corrupting prescrib-
ing behaviour, medical guidelines, entire medical specialty groups,
and the government and professional regulatory authorities. These
industries also support patient support groups. For example, the
American Association of Pediatrics openly invites corporate sponsor-
ship, endorses corn syrup products and their manufacturers, and now
is ghting at the international level to stop the removal of mercury
from vaccines and other medicines. Similarly, Health Canada protects
the proprietary rights of ADHD drug producers despite the growing
number of children who have died from taking these drugs. (Note:
Adults dont die from ADHD drugs, but 600 kids in Canada have died
in the past couple of years alone!)
Meantime, medical journals continue to run drug advertisements.
But thankfully, journals such as PLOS Medicine that dont accept drug
ads have overtaken the others in prestige and readership. PLOS is
now the biggest science journal in the worldand the most respected
because its editors take on all sacred cows and (so far) cannot be
bought.
In medicine, business as usual is no longer an option: there are too
many dead bodies and the carnage is too expensive. So, for example,
Americas largest insurance group, Kaiser Permanente, began con-
ducting the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study. ACE has pro-
duced more than 60 major research papers showing how much more
nancially efcient and effective psychiatric intervention can be
when rst considering one of the major sources of mental health
problemsemotional traumabefore handing out ultimately inef-
fective, almost certainly toxic, and very costly drugs.
Separating Fact From Fiction
In September 2012, PLOS Medicine published an investigation into the
misrepresentation of clinical trials in press releases. Comparing 498
press releases with the published facts in those described trials, they
found that half the releases were total misrepresentations.
Alarmingly, the main factor associated with the spin in press
releases was the presence of spin in the article abstract conclusions
themselves! The data in the article did not correspond to the spun
conclusionsso the press release repeated those, and the profession
was fed spin. The moral of the story is that doctors (and the media)
should read the articles, not rely on abstracts, and that press releases
are best ignored.
In the spin that we are all exposed to, we nd myths and truths
that are exploited most effectively.
FICTION: There is no research on natural therapies because they cant
be patented.
FACT: The published and ongoing research into non-drug therapies is
immense and totally mainstream.
FICTION: Finding effective and safe alternatives to synthetic drugs is
very difcult because only pharmaceutical drugs are subject to
properly conducted and controlled trials; nutritional and comple-
mentary therapies supposedly do not meet that mandatory regu-
latory standard, therefore, their safety and efcacy is unproven.
FACT: The regulatory system does not ensure drug safety or efcacy.
The whole drug approval process is anything but transparent; ver-
ifying the raw data of clinical trials is virtually impossible, because
those data and the main ingredients of drugs are considered pro-
prietary information. And getting the FDA or Health Canada to
put warning labels on drugs is near impossible. You will hear
again and again about some famous drug (e.g. Lipitor, Premarin,
Prozac, Avinda, Vioxx, etc.) that upon deeper investigation has
been found to cause horric side effects ranging from suicide, can-
cer, liver failure, brain shrinkage, and diabetesto murder.
By contrast, nothing even remotely like this has ever hap-
pened with an essential nutrient. Ever heard of a researcher dis-
covering deadly side effects of vitamins, no matter at what dose,
resulting in black box warnings?
FICTION: What we have heard in the past few years is that vitamin E
and selenium will cause cancer, that multivitamins will kill older
women, and that taking omega-3 essential fatty acids will pro-
mote heart disease.
FACT: Every one of those studies can be proven to have been produced
by industry stooges, and every one gave trial participants doses of
those nutrients lower than even the antiquated RDA suggests. (See
details in my annotated sources online at Vitalitys website.)
FACT: Among the industry-useful truths is the ignorance of doctors
who are kept that way through industry-controlled continuing
education. Former two-decade long editor-in-chief of the New
England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, makes it clear:
There should be no relationship between the drug industry and
prescribers or patients. The fact that drug companies pay doctors
to be educated underscores the true nature of the transaction.
Students generally pay teachers, not the reverse.
FACT: The most important industry-serving truth is: Drugs are effec-
tive. Yes, many are, just sufciently over placebo to pass low reg-
ulatory hurdles, and tested for only a few weeks so serious prob-
lems are likely to be rare and can be hidden in those proprietary
raw data. For example, cholesterol-lowering drugs do lower cho-
lesterol. They also give lots of people heart attacks by lowering
blood levels of Coenzyme Q
10
which show up in the long term only.
The whole truth about pharmaceuticals takes time to emerge. By
contrast, the whole truth about the sustaining and curative properties
of essential nutrients is already well known. This prevents research
institutions from permitting trials in which the control group mem-
bers are deprived of those nutrients because this would kill them.
Therefore, only outcome studies of such therapies can be legally
undertaken.
How Nutrients Stack Up Against Drugs
Science which is obedient to the whole truth helps peoplealso in the
long run:
Colorado University oncologists compared chemotherapy with
grape seed extract for stage IV colorectal cancer, and reported that
grape seed stopped the cancer.
Vitamin D
3
has now been shown effective in one of the most pro-
gressive types of breast cancer: In research published in the Jan.
21 issue of The Journal of Cell Biology, a team led by Susana
Gonzalo, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular
biology at Saint Louis University, has discovered a molecular path-
way that contributes to triple-negative breast cancer, an often
deadly and treatment resistant form of cancer that tends to strike
younger women. In addition, Gonzalo and her team identied
vitamin D and some protease inhibitors as possible new therapies
and discovered a set of three biomarkers that can help to identify
patients who could benet from the treatment.
Highly diluted peanut protein taken under the tongue desensitized
70% of peanut allergy patients. (I know three Ontario doctors who
were taken into discipline for doing this.)
Plants are now starting to be used in successfully treating diabetes,
and vitamin D has become the most studied substance with 16
major research papers out in 2012 alone. Meanwhile, diet sodas
(aspartame) have been proven to be brain-toxic. In January, gyne-
cologists promoted the use of herbal treatments for menopause
problems over the toxic drug HRT, in their agship journal.
Link Between Vaccines And Autism Now Undisputed By Courts
In December 2012, U.S. courts awarded the 84th family, whose chil-
dren became autistic after MMR shots, nearly a million dollars and
recognized the causal connection. The Journal of Human & Experimen-
tal Toxicology on April 24, 2012, published the actual numbers of
hospitalization and mortality among infants by the number of vac-
cine doses and age, based on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System for the period 19902010. Conclusion: the more vaccines, the
more dead kids.
Another large study has shown that the whooping cough vaccine
is becoming ineffective. Meanwhile, in January 2013, the Journal of
the American Medical Association seemed to be unaware of the vaccine
death statistics cited above, and opined, without proof, that more kids
will surely become sick because almost half of all U.S. children have
(I say: intelligent) parents who dont comply with vaccination hype.
Growing Public Unrest
On January 15, long-time anti-Big Pharma activist MP Terence Young
joined Prozac-whistleblower Dr. David Healy, York Universitys public
policy professor Joel Lexchin, and patient advocate Dr. Sholom
Glouberman at an event sponsored by the Patients Association of
Canada at Torontos Art Gallery of Ontario. Drug toxicity and the
near total lack of public accountability by Health Canada were the
main topics. Dr. Healy observed that doctors used to relate to their
patients therapeutically, but the magic has moved into the pill
and both are deceived. MP Young, whose daughter died from a toxic
drug now off the market in Canada, observed that People just cant
handle the truth that their doctor would give them something that
could kill them. this is willful blindness.
Below are reliable resources to consult before any diagnoses is
accepted or prescription is lled. They will open your eyes and help
you nd what is good.
I
Resources
www.greenmedinfo.com: all published side effects, toxicities, veried
effectiveness, and safety (or lack of it) on every available drug; the original
medical journal articles can be directly downloaded.
www.Rxisk.org and www.Breggin.com are the best sources for everything you
must know about psychiatric drugs in order to avoid them and save your brains.
www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk for information on legal actions taken against a
drug, vaccine etc anywhere in the world.
The international Cochrane Collaboration is the most respected mainstream
medical watchdog; its excellent reports are free and include plain language
summaries: www.cochrane.org
Public Library of Science (PLOS): an open-access online journal family of which
PLOS Medicine is key.
www.propublica.org information about medical propaganda, media spin,
bribery, etc.
www.Mercola.com is designed for patients looking for correct information on
drugs, treatments, diagnoses.
www.worstpills.org, founded by Ralph Nader, published monthly, its newsletter
Worst Pills, Best Pills initiates and reports on legal actions against specic drugs
and why.
Dr. Sherry Rogers monthly newsletter Total Wellness discusses mainstream
published proof on safe and effective alternatives. I have relied on this
newsletter for 17 years. Superb! Prestige Publishing 1-800-846-6687 or
http://prestigepublishing.com, $ 53/year.
For the most current and thorough overview of the mainstream science on
which environmental, and metabolic medicine is based, get the transcript or the
DVDs of Dr. Mimi Guarneris 2012 The Science of Natural Healing from the
Teaching Company: 1-800-832-2412 www.thegreatcourses.com Dr. Guarneri is
certied in cardiology, internal, nuclear, and holistic medicine and the founder
of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine. Brilliant!
The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, published monthly. Doctors
practicing integrative medicine explain which drugs are harmful, which are
effective and safe, and how to know the difference. The language is designed for
non-medical readers; extensively sourced. It publishes Moss Reports on cancer,
www.townsendletter.com
www.orthomolecular.org sign up for free for veriable, mainstream research on
how vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients prevent and treat illness. A No Bull
resource.
I
Sources
Below is an annotated source list listed in sequence of discussion in
the article by Helke Ferrie for Vitalitys February 2013 issue.
Introduction
Examples of excellent medical outcomes published in mainstream
medical journals include Dr. F. R. Klenner who in the 1930s and 40s
cured polio in children with intravenous vitamin C long before the
vaccine was created; he also cured various autoimmune diseases and
untreatable viruses and published the results in the 1950s. To obtain
a full list of his publications go to Townsend Letter for Doctors and
Patients 2005 where a 2-part series was re-published on his work with
a full bibliography.
A second excellent source for the successful treatment of anaphy-
laxis, allergy, infections like double-sided pneumonia etc without the
use of antibiotics but the use of autogenously produced vaccine
(made from the patients white blood cells) go to the magisterial work
by Dr. Theron Randolph (taught at Chicago University): Environmental
MedicineBeginnings & Bibliographies of Clinical Ecology, 1987.
Dr. Max Gersons books from the 1930s on curing cancer and his
bibliography published in mainstream journals in Germany and the
USA are available through the Gerson Institute: www.gersonorg . See
A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases, 1958. These cases were present-
ed before the US Congress.
For successful treatments of even the most severe types of schizo-
phrenia see Dr. Abram Hoffer, Adventures in Psychiatry, Kos 2005. Dr.
Hoffer was professor of psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan
and reformed the mental hospitals there at the request of then
Premier Tommy Douglas. Hoffer did the rst known double blind
placebo controlled studies on treatment of schizophrenia with nutri-
tion and high-dose B vitamins. They were published in the Lancet.
For details on the prosecution of doctors working in cutting edge
areas with excellent results google Glasnost Report 2001 or download
from www.helkeferrie.com
Explosion
The article that caused such a (because it showed that prescription
drugs are a leading cause of death, was published in JAMA by J.
Lazarou, N. H. Pomeranz, P. N. Corey, Incidence of Adverse Drug
Reactions in Hospitalized Patients: A Meta-analysis of Prospective
Studies, vol. 279 (15), 1998.
The follow up in 2007 is by T. J. Moore at al. Serious Adverse Drug
Events Reported for the Food and Drug Administration: 1998-2005,
Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 167 (16), 2007
The US Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report in January
2013 with the statistics that show that the health of US citizens, even
in the high income groups, is worse than the health of people living
in 16 other developed countries. Google National Academy of
Sciences, posting date January 9, 2013.
Makary MD, Unaccountable: What Hospitals Wont Tell You and
How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care, Bloomsbury Press
2012. While the information is tailored to a US population, the basic
facts apply to Canada as well.
Prof. Alan Cassels wrote the article on hopes for a prevention-
propaganda-free year in Common Ground, January 2013. Highly
recommended is his new book Seeking SicknessMedical Screening and
the Misguided Hunt for Disease, Keystone 2012
D. W. Light, The Risks of Prescription Drugs, Columbia University
Press, 2010
R. Fitzgerald, The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the
Chemicals that Are Destroying Your Health, updated edition, Plume 2007
The source for the call to stop mammography screening is P. C.
Gotzsche MD, editorial in CMAJ, November 22, 2011: Time to stop
mammography screening?
The details on screening tests in general and why they are neither
reliable nor useful, see Dr. H. G. Welch et al., Overdiagnosed: Making
People Sick in the Pursuit of Health, Beacon, 2011. A Must-Read before
agreeing to any test!
On the corruption of prescribing habits, pharmaceutical control of
medical groups and patient support organizations, and especially
continuing medical education conferences see the books by Dr. Carl
Elliott, White Coat Black Hat, 2010, Dr. Jerome Kassirer (Yale University
Medical School, past editor of the New England Journal of Medicine), On
The Take, 2004; Dr. David Healeys 2012 book Pharmageddon, Dr.
Marcia Angells (editor New England Journal of Medicine for 19 years,
now professor of public policy at Harvard University) The Truth About
the Drug Companies, 2003. For the evidence on how medical journals
are controlled through pharmaceutical advertising see Richard
Smith, The Trouble With Medical Journals, 2006. Dr. Smith was the edi-
tor in chief of the British Medical Journal for 20 years. The comments
about medicines relationship with the pharmaceutical industry by
Dr. Marcia Angell were published in the British Medical Journal,
February 7, 2009, p. 328f
The source for the industry-friendly attitude of the American
Academy of Pediatrics is on their website: accessed January 24, 2013.
An analysis of the nancial conicts of interest within the AAP was
published by FOX News.com December 13, 2010: Conicts of
Childrens Interest inside the American Academy of Pediatrics by D.
Imus. The AAP published their unsupported and insupportable opin-
ions on organic foods for children in their October 22, 2012 issue.
Their ght to keep mercury in vaccines and medicines is detailed in a
report by the Alliance for Natural Health-USA, January 15, 2013.
J. Neuman et al. Prevalence of nancial conicts of interest
among panel members producing clinical practice guidelines in
Canada and the United States: cross sectional study, British Medical
Journal, 2011. This is an open access article and can be downloaded
fro free.
F. E. Vera-Badillo et al. Bias in reporting of endpoints of efcacy
and toxicity in randomized clinical trials for women with breast can-
cer. Annals of Oncology, January 2013
A. Lundh et al Industry sponsorship and research outcome.
Cochrane Library, December 2012 (NOTE: Canadas Joel Lexchin is
one of the authors)
R. Moynihan et al. Preventing over-diagnosis: how to stop harm-
ing the healthy. British Medical Journal, May 29, 2012
An editorial in PLoS Medicine entitled Does Conict of Interest
Disclosure Worsen Bias? April 2012, vol. 9, issue 4.
Nature vol. 491, Nov. 2012: the US National Institutes of Health is
stepping up enforcement of its public access policy. Any research pub-
licly funded must be publicly accessible within 12 months of publica-
tion. The NIH will stop funding researchers who dont comply.
L. Cosgrove & S. Krimsky, A Comparison of the DSM-IV and the
DSM-5 Panel Members Financial Associations with Industry: A
Pernicious Problem Persists, PLoS Medicine, March 2012, vol. 6, issue
3. Open access.
Kaiser Permanentes ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) project
has generated some 60 specic studies so far. Google ACE study and
read the ones of relevance to you.
The Medical Post, December 18, 2012, p. 39-40, ran an editorial
entitled Psychiatrists paint a bigger picture of health which report-
ed on the results so far of the ACE project.
This is the source for the analysis of press releases spun to make
results of trials look more industry-friendly. A. Yavchitz et al.
Misrepresentation of Randomized Controlled Trials in Press releases
and News Coverage: A Cohort Study. PLoS Medicine (open access),
Sept. 2012, vol. 9, issue 9.
The details on how trials are rigged, trial participants are often
seriously maltreated, how those with side effects are removed from
the nal data etc. are found especially in Carl Elliott MD, White Coat
Black Hat, 2010 and David Healy MD, Pharmageddon, 2012. For asso-
ciated tricks to avoid transparency and public accountability read MP
Terence Youngs 2009 book Death by Prescription.
The ght for the raw data as being public property, not corporate
property, is found in the reports of the Cochrane Collaboration. All for
free downloadable.
To understand essential nutrients, when they were discovered as
such, their legal status etc. the easiest source is Wikipedia where you
will also nd a very useful entry on the Dietary Reference Intake. It
is useful because it shows the history of this concept, why it is outdat-
ed, and that the critic of the RDA is based on the fact that those max-
imums and minimums are all based on opinion, not on scientic
sources one can access and read. For really good sources, that are
properly referenced, and based on clinical data go to the Textbook of
Nutritional Medicine by Dr. A. Gaby. It is expensive and a huge book.
Ask your local library to buy it so you and others can consult it. Also
recommended is the new book by the Director of the Canadian
College of Naturopathic Medicine, Jonathan Prousky, Integrative Clinical
Nutrition, CCNM Press, 2012.
The data on the safety of nutritional supplements, the fact that no
deaths have been reported in three decades, their efcacy and so on,
go to Alliance for Natural Health UK and download their reports on
these topics.
The three totally phony studies, supposedly showing the dangers
to health from nutritional supplements, were:
1. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Sept. 12,
2012, published an article alleging that supplementation with
omega-3 fatty acids was not associated with a lower risk of all-
cause mortality An excellent analysis of this study, which Dr.
Alan R. Gaby calls shy is in The Townsend Letter for Doctors and
Patients, December 2012, p. 122-123. Essentially, what the researchers
did was to use so low a dose that it was totally meaningless; they
also avoided making any reference to existing studies showing the
opposite. Had they done so, the dosage problem would have been
immediately clear.
2. JAMA published in 2011 (vol. 306, issue 4) a study entitled
Elevated risk of prostate cancer with vitamin E supplementation.
The researchers gave less than even the current RDA for healthy
people to men at risk for prostate cancer. They added selenium
which is known to be specically important for healthy prostates,
but again in dosages that are meaningless to sick people. It was
also unclear what criteria were used to identify at risk for
prostate cancer, and the quality of the vitamin E (natural?
Synthetic? All 8 forms of tecopherol?) was not identied. A bril-
liant example of research trash.
3. The Archives of Internal Medicine published on October 10, 2011, an
article on the results of the Iowa Womens Study supposedly show-
ing that taking multivitamins increase mortality in women. The
principal investigator was David R. Jacobs Jr. PhDthe same as
for the equally absurd study published in the American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition in 2004 (vol. 80, issue 1) entitled Does supple-
mental vitamin C increase cardiovascular disease risk in women
with diabetes? See my article in Vitality, October 2012, for an in-
depth discussion of both.
Important examples of publications of no scientic merit, specically
at Health Canada:
Health Canada has not amended its information on Vitamin C
which was posted in 2007 on their website. Unfortunately, it is tax-
payer funded and contains insupportable nonsense. HC recommends
a maximum dose for adults of 2,000 mg daily, and for children 400
mg. A lab animal used for drug testing is given up to 50,000 mg to
ensure they are healthy and presumably to stand the assault of those
chemicals better. The references are all outdated and biased and no
mention is made of the qualitative difference between various vita-
min C supplement sources. To understand the qualitative difference
go to the website of the Linus Pauling Institute and browse through
their references on vitamin C and go to the orthomolecular medicine
website given in the rst set of resources.
The Toronto Star reported on September 29, 2012, that the death
toll from ADHD drugs in Canada among children is at over 600, but
Health Canada refuses to publish the full data on the drugs used for
this diagnosis. For information on how Health Canada fails to moni-
tor adverse drug events and supports the industry regardless of the
death toll, go to the website of Oakville MP Terence Young, read his
book Death by Prescription, 2009, and go to the following link to
watch him and Dr. David Healy, Dr. Sholom Glouberman, professor Joel
Lexchin at an event that took place at the AGO in Toronto, January 15,
2013. http://wp.rxisk.org/videos/ and http://www.billiamjames.com.
See also the excellent report on this event in the National Post by
Joseph Brean: Poison in healthy doses.
Among the highly welcome surprises on good medical science:
The Medical Post published an article December 18, 2012, on how
to evaluate medical guidelines. The chief source is Dr. Gordon Guyatt
of MacMaster Medical School in Hamilton and co-author of the text-
book on evidence-based medicine. Excellent! Every doctor should be
required to pass an exam on this topic.
In December 2012 a US court awarded a the family of a child who
became autistic after receiving his MMR shots in 2003, $969,474.91 in
compensation, after afrming that the cause of his autism was the
vaccine. For the whole story and the 83 other cases of this kind go to
www.vactrtuth.com
JAMA Pediatrics expressed its concern in a study it published on
January 21, 2013, showing that almost half of all US children either
are not vaccinated or receive less vaccines or on a different schedule
determined by their parents (i.e. later in life when the immune system
is more developed and better able to cope with vaccines). JAMA is
concerned because this would allegedly mean that such children
would be less likely to visit their doctors ofces and more likely to be
admitted to hospitalswithout citing a shred of evidence to prove
that such children are more likely to be sick! The existing evidence is
exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, this is welcome information: par-
ents are getting smarter!
N. P. Klein et al. Waning protection after Fifth Dose of Acellular
Pertussis Vaccine in Children. New England Journal of Medicine, vol.
367, Sept. 13, 2012. The article describes in excellent detail why the
whooping cough vaccine ceases to work. See also my Vitality articles
of October and December 2012 on this and related issues. The online
version on Vitalitys website provide the sources.
The journal Pediatrics published an article showing that almost
80% of children receive alternative medical care sought out by their
parents. The studys author feels doctors have an obligation to
ensure they are educated on these therapies. S. Vohra et al.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use by Pediatric Specialty
Outpatients. Pediatrics Jan 14, 2013
I. L. Tong. Nonpharmacological treatment of postmenopausal symp-
toms. The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Vol. 15 (1), 2013. Reported
here is the fact that close to 80% of post-menopausal women use
herbal treatments for menopausal symptoms, and the author sug-
gests this is a good idea and should be promoted and studied further,
because standard hormone replacement therapy with drugs is well-
known to be toxic.
PTSD seems to be helpful in making good decisions when faced
with standard medicine: D. Edmondson et al report in the British
Medical Journal on January 18, 2013, in an article entitled Concerns
about medications mediate the association of post-traumatic stress
disorder with adherence to medication in stroke survivors that stroke
survivors with PTSD distrust their medications and dont take them,
compared to those who do not have a history of PTSD. It was not
reported whether the PTSD patients died in larger numbersI doubt it!
The details on the many mainstream studies in vitamin D
3
are in
the Orthomolecular Medicine Service (online) January 17, 2013.
www.orthomolecular.org
The use of vitamin D
3
to treat successfully generally untreatable
triple-negative breast cancer was in The Journal of Cell Biology, vol.
200(2), 2013 by D.A. Grotzky et al.
The use of grape seed extract for advanced stage IV breast cancer
was published in Cancer Letters on January 21, 2013. The research
was conducted by the University of Colorado Cancer Centre.
The use of sublingual immunotherapy to desensitize sever peanut
allergy was reported in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, vol.
131 (1), 2013 by D. M. Fleischer et al.
Using plant extracts instead of drugs to treat diabetes was a press
release by the University of Greenwich, UK, January 16, 2013
That diet sodas and sugared drinks cause depression was a press
release from the American Academy of Neurology, January 8, 2013.
For contact: helkeferrie@gmail.com
EPI LOGUE
NOW WHAT THE HECK DO I DO
WITH ALL THI S INFORMATI ON?
When an old and distinguished person speaks to you,
listen to him carefully and with respectbut do not believe him.
Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect.
Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair,
no matter whether he is a Nobel laureatemay be wrong
you must always be skepticalalways think for yourself.
Linus Pauling (19011994)
two-time Nobel laureate (chemistry and peace)
You now have plowed through a lot of material and maybe you were
shocked by much of it and, hopefully, encouraged a lot too.
Everything provided here can be verified. Nothing is hidden.
Personally, my fond hope is that readers will start reading bibliogra-
phies. Whenever I pick up a book or a medical journal article, the rst
thing I read is the bibliography! Scientic literature is ultimately a
dialogue with the sources cited by the authors. If the topic of the book
or article focuses on a specic problem, the sources at the end tell you
immediately whether the writer is with it or not. If, for example, the
subject matter is MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity) and the author
does not mention the 1999 Consensus Statement published by Johns
Hopkins Medical School, you can be pretty sure he/she is either igno-
rant or has an anti-MCS agenda. Many examples of this sort of
phony scholarship were provided in this book. You can apply the
same test to me and contact me if you want to correct me on some-
thing.
I hope also that readers will start trusting their own judgment, ask
uncomfortable questions when talking to a doctor, never agree to
anything without rst checking it out for side effects, risks, alterna-
tives, and liability issues already in the courts. If the doctor tries to dis-
miss you with little explanation, remember Einstein who used to say
to his physics students that if they could not explain what they were
learning to their grandmothers, they didnt understand it themselves.
Remember also, that anything a doctor suggests must by law be
based on informed consentand a doctors job is to inform you, not
with generalities and platitudes, but real published facts. It is not
acceptable to practice on automatic pilot.
One of the questions that likely will arise now is, Whom can I
trust? The answer I would like to suggest is: Trust is not a one time
event but a life-long dialogue. It is irrational for anybody to expect
you to trust them as a matter of course. If your doctor takes your
blood pressure and tells you its high because it measures 140 over
80you need to ask what makes him or her think it is high. What is
high anyway? By the way, that is not high.
Marcia Angell, the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of
Medicine for 19 years advises in her 2003 book The Truth About the
Drug Companies to ask your doctor if the prescription you are being
given is the result of advice from a drug rep or based on the doctors
experience with patients, and if there is hesitation or an unclear
reply, re the doctor!
Another hope of mine is that readers think twice, or even more
times than that, before going for annual check-ups, subject themselves
to just-in-case screening tests that are known to be useless, take the sea-
sonal u shot (that way truly madness lies!)in short, simply refuse to
be part of this fear-fueled and science-challenged medical system.
Here is a suggestion: go to a naturopath, homeopath, or Traditional
Chinese Medicine doctor and nd out how very differently they will
look at you. The naturopath will check out what vitamin and miner-
al deciencies you are likely to have, ask you helpful questions about
your eating habits, check for signs of food intolerances, ascertain hor-
mone imbalances (and suggest bioidentical hormones, if necessary,
not carcinogenic drugs). You will learn about essential fatty acids,
how to make your home and work environment safe from environ-
mental toxins, and above all you will learn how to eat so that your
body is properly fueled and your immune system becomes happier.
You will have read earlier my review of Dr. Prouskys Textbook on
Integrative Clinical Nutrition. In it he outlines how a naturopath is sup-
posed to check out a clients health status along the lines I just listed.
The Chinese Medicine doctor will balance your bodys energy systems,
and the homeopath will identify your highly personal needs.
However, your medical doctor wouldnt know anything about all
this, even though in terms of training, both the MD and the ND study
for at least seven years.
At the very least, if alternative medicine is not available to you, go
on the internet and check out what you were told by your MD.
Something I do almost daily is to check on the internet what crit-
ics say. Take a drug like Lipitorthe biggest blockbuster drug of all
time. Read what the manufacturer has to say, then put into the
search box: Lipitor + side effects, then Lipitor + legal action, then
Lipitor + critics and so on. Try this for mammography, cholesterol,
cancer, and the u vaccinebe prepared to amaze yourself. The key
idea is simple: what is the whole truth and who prots from these drugs
and tests? Where is the evidence that people are actually helped?
You might learn the most from this book by going back over the
source and resource information in this book, following those articles
that interested you the most, and maybe subscribe to Dr. Sherry
Rogers Total Wellness newsletter or browse through the issues of The
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients and the Journal of Ortho-
molecular Medicine in search of information on whatever health ques-
tion you have. Those are sources a patient can understand.
A comment I frequently hear from readers is that they are afraid
to antagonize their family doctor. If he or she cannot answer ques-
EPILOGUE 395
tions, listen to legitimate concerns, and insists on an authoritarian
one-way street relationship, wellsuch doctor should be sent to a
1950s TV show, like Father Knows Best, but in the 21st century such
doctors are fossils. You need a paternalistic doctor who assumes he
can just tell you what to do, with the expectation of obedience, about
as badly as you need a cancer diagnosis.
I know what I am talking about: I was seriously ill with
Myasthenia gravis and red my neurologist and went on to be cured
of a supposedly incurable auto-immune disease through orthomolec-
ular medicine. I was sick for years with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
and found the treatment, essentially outside standard medicine at
that time, and also fought the neighboring golf course which I helped
to wean off pesticides after learning that pesticide are one of the main
causes of MCS; my husband and I continued to persist in bringing out
the facts about pesticides in our area and helped to get Orangeville
off that drug habit, too. Two of my grandchildren, one of our sons and
his wife, as well as my husband and I, became ill with Lyme disease
in 2012, which at the time the government didnt even recognize as a
serious illness and endemic in Canada. Even now there are hardly
any infectious disease doctors who know anything useful about Lyme
disease in Canada and most patients are forced to go the USA for
treatment. I was cured without any antibiotics, as I am allergic to
them all, and only one grandchild needed antibiotics. In short, my
monthly articles in Vitality and my advice to trust your own instincts
(above all else) are the result of several memorable visits in Hell.
I will end by citing my favorite philosopher, Voltaire, whose irrev-
erent wisdom always gives me a lift. He asserts that one is free the
instant one wants to be. What I hope I have done here is to take my
readers on a journey through my own attempts to think for myself
and now, as Voltaire says, to have you enjoy the privilege of doing
so too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helke Ferrie was born in 1948 in Germany to parents who, with
Bishop Martin Niemollers group, were founding members of the
resistance movement against Hitler. Helke spent most of her child-
hood until age 18 in India where she was educated in an American
international school and her parents worked for the newly independ-
ent Indian government. She attended Zurich University, studying
Sanskrit and English and German literature. During a year at Benares
Hindu University in Varanasi, India, she met her Canadian husband,
Dr. Robert K. Ferrie, then a urologist and since 1984 a psychothera-
pist. They married in 1970 and raised three biological and eleven
adopted children. Until 1980 they ran an international child welfare
charity for handicapped and orphaned children mostly from India.
By 1995 she earned an honors B.A in Ancient Near Eastern
Archaeology, Chinese history and philosophy and an M.A. in
Physical Anthropology from the University of Toronto. Following a
serious illness caused by a life-long exposure to DDT and mercury
dental amalgam, she learned about the politics of medicine which
attends medical discoveries threatening economic priorities. In 1997
she began writing about these issues for Alive, Vitality magazine, and
other venues in Canada and the US. In 2002 she incorporated Kos
Publishing Inc., which produces books, mostly by doctors, on medico-
political issues. Helke and Robert live with two dogs and ve cats
north of Toronto; they have six grandchildren and one great-grand
son. She is the author of Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental
Health (Kos 2004), What Part of No! Dont They Understand? (Kos 2008),
both available now for free downloading at her website, and the cur-
rent Creative Outrage (Kos 2013). She is the editor and co-author of
Ending DenialThe Lyme Disease Epidemic: A Canadian Public Health
Disaster (Kos 2010). Visit her and her publications at
www.helkeferrie.com

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